BETTER SHELTER CONDITIONS

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLVIII, Issue 21817, 21 November 1940, Page 5

BETTER SHELTER CONDITIONS

Masks To Guard Against Infection British Official Wireless (Received November 20, 6.30 p.m.) RUGBY, November 19. Further recommendations by the Horder Committee on air raid shelter conditions were issued to-day as a White Paper and are engaging the Government’s instant attention. It will be recalled that the Minister of Health (Mr Malcolm MacDonald) told the House of Commons a month ago that every original recommendation made verbally on September 18 had been accepted and was being acted upon. Among the new recommendations are the requisitioning of shelters at night for the public, the utmost degree of dispersal in order to deal with overcrowding, which is the crux of the problem, the popularisation of domestic communal shelters, all boroughs to find further shelter accommodation such as in basements and railway arches, the evacuation of the aged, bed-ridden and infirm in order to reduce the strain on shelter accommodation, the provision of sanitary equipment by local authorities, the encouragement of inoculation against diptheria. In connection with infection in shelters generally and the contingency naturally to be provided for under shelter conditions, the committee recommends the issue of a simple form of face mask to help to prevent infection from coughing and sneezing. The ■White Paper states that relevant tests are being carried out and in tb n time a considerable quantity of such masks are available. The committee is meeting frequently, and close liaison is being maintained with the Ministers of Health and Home Security. Lord Horder, summarising the situation in a broadcast, said: “I would like everybody concerned in this job to tackle it in the spirit which says ‘I will not sleep myself until the peonle have security not only from death by bombing but death from disease also’.”