Epidemics by Air

A traveler exposed to cholera in Naples can land in New York the next day without realizing that he has picked up the disease. A homeward-bound Denverite may leave a typhus area in China, sit down at his own table two days later, unaware that typhus germs are at work in his system. Because the incubation period for many diseases is a fortnight or longer, air travel has multiplied the chances of travelers' bringing disease home with them. Yet the quarantine system has scarcely changed in 500 years.*

A case in point: a smallpox outbreak in Seattle (TIME, April 8), touched off by a soldier just back from Japan. Last week San Francisco's Director of Public Health, Dr. Jacob Casson Geiger, cried out that the danger of airborne epidemics is real and imminent.

For possible consideration at the United Nations health parley in June, he outlined a scheme: a globe-girdling network of public health stations, serviced by a medical "intelligence system" which would spot epidemics at their source, flash the news to other stations by radio. Air travelers would be immunized before entering a disease area, overhauled thoroughly when leaving. Travelers who refused immunization would be warned that they had been exposed, alerted on symptoms; word of their exposure would precede them to their next destination, where they would be rechecked.

Said U.S. Chief of Foreign Quarantine Dr. Gilbert Dunnahoo: "What we need is coordinated action."

*In 1485, Venice decreed that all vessels coming from infected ports be detained incommunicado in the harbor for 40 days. Normal U.S. quarantine time: up to 14 days.

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