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from abroad or from other infected regions of China. service gradually extended its field of action from Shanghai, where the Director resides, to the ports of Canton, Amoy, Swatow, Hankow, Chin Wang Tao, Tangku-Taku, Hangkow and Ningpo. The efficiency of this service, of its staff and material, is officially recognised by the health authorities of neighbouring countries.
The Quarantine Service issues each week bulletins on the epidemiological situation in the ports under its control and also yearly reports of great technical interest.
The Central Field Health Station plays an important part in the campaign against epidemics by sending investiga- tors to study serious epidemic outbreaks and in certain cases takes appropriate measures through technical groups on the spot. Such was the case for bubonic plague in Shansi and Shensi in October 1931, for cholera in Shanghai in 1931 and 1932, for Cerebro-spinal Meningitis in Tangshan in 1931, for dysentery in Kiangsi in 1934 and for plague in Fukien in 1935. Moreover, the bacteriological and serological laboratories of the Station carried out diagnostic examinations entrusted to them.
The National Epidemic Prevention Bureau has a double function. It collects information on the existence and prevalence of communicable diseases in the various Provinces through the monthly communications received from nearly 700 hospitals and practitioners of "stern medicine distributed all over the country. In addition it prepares sera and vaccines needed by the local health services over the larger part of the country.1.2.
In 1934-35 the production of therapeutic sera (five types) reached about 500,000 c.c. and 2,321,000 c.c, of various.. vaccines, not counting over a million tubes of lymph vaccines.
The present note, having for its primary object the showing of the general health organisation so as to make clear the functions of the anti-epidemic services, we purposely make only brief allusion to the maternal and infant welfare organisation, for which more than twelve midwifery schools have been created, the central one of which is in Nanking; to school hygiene, which has already been established in four large cities and begun in ten Provinces, etc; to industrial health, in which the Central Field Health Station and the Factory Inspection Bureau of the Ministry of Industry collaborate, etc.
I
The North West Epidemic Prevention Bureau plays a similar
part with regard to vaccines and sera against animal diseases. It has established two centres, one in Lanchow (Kansu) in 1934, the other in Kweisui (Suiyuan) in 1935.
2.
The Public Health Laboratory of the Chinese Municipality
of Greater Shanghai also produces considerable quantities of vaccines against cholera, typhoid, cerebro-spinal fever, smallpox and rabies.