SIGNING THE CHILDREN’S DEATH WARRANT.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17218, 8 December 1923, Page 8

SIGNING THE CHILDREN’S DEATH WARRANT.

Nobody can accuse Dr Blackmore of being an alarmist in regard to the spread of consumption, for he has taken his coat off, so to speak, and devoted himself to a life of patient service in what is proving to be a winning fight against the disease in the Canterbury province, at all events. Yet he declares that if, as he has reason to believe, an order was given to relax the regulations w'ith regard to the supervision of dairy herds, it signed the death warrant of a large number of young children, because tuberculosis automatically increased as the supply of contaminated milk became greater.

Dr Blackmore’s statement deserves the most careful consideration of every citizen, but particularly of every public man. It is an indictment of the city's milk supply which the City Council dare not ignore. He points out that of all tlve cases of tuberculosis in children, 25 per cent, are due to infected milk, and that nearly all of the cases in the joints, bones anti abdomen are due to infected milk. He advocates not a municipal herd, but a city supply distributed hv the municipal authority and drawn only from tested herds under the most stringent supervision. In effect, he declares that the city supply is dangerous, and from the figures he quotes it may well be that from a third even up to a half of the cows supplying the city are tubercular. That danger would be averted with a municipal jnilk supply, but Dr Blackmore does not disregard the national aspect of the case w'hen he suggests that in purifying the dairy herds of the Dominion tire Government, for a period of five years should pay the full price of the animals destroyed, and thereafter no compensation whatever. With the larger aspect of the question it is not necessary for the city to deal, but immediate attention should be given to Dr Blaekmore’s recommendations regarding a municipal supply, and the experience in Wellington could 'be made the subject of a preliminary report from which the matter could he discussed. *