AN ANNOUNCEMENT FROM THE N.Z. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH

Te Ao Hou, April 1958, Page 63

AN ANNOUNCEMENT FROM THE N.Z. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH The fly has a short life but a merry one. Flies believe in large families. It's nothing to Mrs. Fly to produce 120 eggs in a day and repeat the performance four to six times during her life of a few weeks. Meantime, her fickle mate is on the wing again for another fly-by-night conquest. FACTS ABOUT FLIES. Did you know that a fly flies at only 4½ miles an hour or about the pace a horse walks? Why then is he so maddeningly hard to swat? Because he has four thousand lenses for eyes: he's slicker than a jet plane — he can fly rapidly sideways, and, as if that weren't enough, his built-in radar detects the movement of your arm as it comes in to get him. THE ANSWER. Kill flies where they breed before they have a chance to reproduce millions of progeny, just one of which can carry on its tiny body, over 3,000,000 bacteria, and can spread over a flight area of 5 square miles, scores of infectious diseases. Some of these are tuberculosis, diarrhoea, food poisoning, undulant fever, conjunctivitis, “summer sickness,”, dysentery, typhoid, etc. His filthy habits of vomiting and constantly passing liquid waste, menace health. DOWN but not out— Millions upon millions of FLIES are waiting to take the place of the one just killed. Remember the use of insecticides is no substitute for the simple precautions everybody can, and should take, against the fly—through cleanliness, the proper disposal of house and garden garbage, and through keeping food covered. NEVER use insecticide spray where food is exposed.