STRANGE EPIDEMIC

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18066, 18 April 1933, Page 5

STRANGE EPIDEMIC

TYPHOID OUTBREAK ‘•CARRIER” IN RELIGIOUS CAMP HEALTH OFFICERS’ SEARCH SYDNEY, April 8. An outbreak of typhoid in New South Wales has occasioned surprise and alarm to health, authorities. l r p to a few weeks ago typhoid in this State was classified as a “vanishing” disease. But within the past seven weeks seven deaths have occurred from typhoid in this State, and 39 other people are suffering from the disease. The Public Health Department officials haye been investigating actively, and they have traced all these cases to at camp meeting held by a religious sect, "The Followers of Christ,” nearly two months ago. Between February 9 and 12 300 members of this sect assembled a few miles from Cowra (220 miles from Sydney), and the doctors are now convinced that the spread of the disease is due to some “carrier” who was then and there present. A “carrier” may have shown no symptom of the disease for 20 or'3o years—there is one celebrated case of a milk vendor who “carried” the germ in sterile form for 40 years, and then suddenly infected all his customers. It is therefore of the utmost importance for. the public safety that all “carriers’’ Should be discovered and isolated, and tlie Poafd of Health is now engaged iA "following up” these recent manifestations of the disease TRACING 300 PEOPLE Every one of the 300 people who attended this convention has been circularised with a request for a full statement of his or her medical history. These people are now scattered all over New South Wales, but in the interests of the public safety this difficult work must be carried out. The period of incubation for typhoid—the tune that the germ takes to develop—is from 12 to 20 days, and three weeks later, as a rule, comes the crisis. The epidemic is now at its most menacing stage, and tlie Board of Health is making strenuous efforts to secure exhaustive information about possible carriers and contacts. The Director-General of Health has stated that out of every 100 persons infected with typhoid three are “’carriers” capable of spreading the disease even 40 years later. He urged that all who attended the camp or have since come in contact with the campers should be promptly inoculated. NEED OF PROPER SANITATION Of course, the. best preventive against typhoid is up-to-date sanitation —a matter in which most open-air camps are woefully deficient. Our public health officials" insist that this country will never be safe from outbreaks of this sort till “every large country town in New South Wales is sewered.” But in the meantime the Departmental medical officers are poring over 100 or more “medical histories” already received from the campers, and everybody is hoping that the “’carrier” wiM be identified and isolated before any more harm is done.