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No. 41.

THE SECRETARY OF STATE to THE GOVERNORS, ETC.*

(Circular.)

Downing Street, 13 July, 1908. [To Responsible Government Colonies, 17 July, 1908.]

SIR,

I HAVE the honour to transmit to you, for communication to the Senior Medical Officer, copies of the reportst from the Tropical Schools at London and Liverpool, and from the Colonial Laboratory at IIong Kong, which were laid before the Tropical Diseases Research Fund Advisory Committee at its first ordinary meeting on the 11th of June.

2. I shall be glad to receive any observations which you or your medical adviser may desire to offer on these reports.

I have, &c.,

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No. 42.

PROFESSOR R. ROSS to COLONEL J. SEELY.

(Received 24 July, 1908.)

[Answered by Nos. 44 and 69.]

CREWE.

Johnston Tropical Laboratory, University of Liverpool,

22 July, 1908. Returns Regarding Malaria in the Colonies.

DEAR COLONEL SEELY,

AT your visit to Liverpool on the 8th May last you gave me permission to write to you on the subject of the returns regarding malaria in the Colonies recently published by the Advisory Committee for the Tropical Diseases Research Fund in its report for the year 1907. For several reasons I thought it advisable to postpone taking advantage of your permission until my report on the prevention of malaria in Mauritius, on which I have been engaged for four months, was finished.

If you remember the circumstances, the returns referred to were ordered by the Secretary of State for the Colonies on the 6th June, 1906, in response to your own request for them uttered in Parliament on the 4th May, 1906.

In his circular letter (to the Governors of all Colonies, &c., not possessing Responsible Government, and the 11igh Commissioner of Cyprus) the Secretary of State said: "I recognise that the publication of annual or periodical reports show- ing what has, or has not, been done in the different Colonies and Protectorates to put into practice the preventives and remedies which have been abundantly tested by scientific experts is one method of ensuring steady progress." He added that: This special report or section of a report would be supplementary to, and not in substitution for, the returns now included in the annual report. It should give a concise account of the nature and cost of all measures of the kind indicated which have been begun or were in progress during the period in question, whether by legislation, publie works, education, sanitation, or otherwise, and it should, if practicable, give figures showing the comparative salubrity of different localities. and the varying rates of death or disease from malaria, &c., among the several classes of the community. Any really accurate and trustworthy figures as to the results of precautions taken against mosquito-borne infection should be of value." The Secretary of State also suggested that yellow fever and other mosquito-borne diseases should be reported on.

2. Statements regarding twenty-one Colonies, occupying altogether twenty- seven pages, are given in the Report of the Advisory Committee alluded to; and I have the following remarks to make regarding them:-

For eleven of the Colonies no special reports on malaria, such as were required

Papua, Fiji, Southern Rhodesia, the East Africa, Nyasaland, Somaliland and Uganda Protec- torates. Gambia, Gold Coast, Northern and Southern Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Ceylon, Federated Malay States, Hong Kong, Mauritius, Seychelles, Straits Settlements, Bahamas, Barbados, Bermuda, British Gaim, British Honduras, Jamaica, Leeward Islands, Dominica, St. Christopher and Nevis, Trinida and Tobago, Grenada, St. Luc'a, and St. Vincent.

↑ No. 1 in Appendix VI., No. 1 in Appendix V., and No. 7 in Appendix VII., in [C. 4476.]

No. 88 in Miscellaneous No. 173.

by the Secretary of State, are given; and we can find only short extracts on the subject taken from the ordinary medical reports. For the most part, these give scarcely any of the information called for.

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(1) Thus for Northern Nigeria we learn only that "All practical means for the eradication of malaria are taken as part of the routine sanitary work." This is interesting; but it appears to me that the Secretary of State asked not for a general statement, but for exact details. For example, as all practical means "have been adopted in Northern Nigeria, the Government of that Colony could easily have informed the Secretary of State, had it taken the trouble to do so, regarding such important points as the general spleen-rate of the children in the Colony, the number of cases of malaria treated in the hospitals and dispensaries, the administration of quinine to school children and others, the number of men employed on antimalarial works, the organisation adopted for this purpose, the cost of the campaign, and, above all, the statistical evidence of the results which must have followed the large efforts referred to, but which have not yet been made public.

(2) Regarding St. Lucia (page 31), all we learn is that " during the present year (1906) the tanks will be screened, and repairs executed to prevent the breeding of mosquitoes," and that steps will be taken to remove undergrowth and to define the hospital boundaries. No statement is vouchsafed as to the amount of malaria in the Colony, the administration of quinine, the drainage of marshes, and other important points connected with the reduction of the disease.

(3) For British Honduras (page 23) it is stated that a Screening Ordinance was passed, and that apparently really active measures were taken against those kinds of mosquitoes which breed in receptacles of water round houses, that is, not generally those kinds which carry malaria. On other points of equal or greater importance, however, the report is silent.

(4) For the Bahamas (page 31) we are told frankly that "No measures have been taken by this Government for the prevention of malarial fevers, yellow fever, and other mosquito-borne diseases," and that even some "simple and practical rules for the suppression of mosquito-borne diseases" recommended by the Board of Health were thought by the Administration and Executive Council to be ultra vires, and were "therefore not adopted." The Government of the Bahamas appears, therefore, not only to have neglected its duties in protecting His Majesty's subjects from such casily preventable diseases, but to have refused to allow its own Board of Health to warn these subjects against the dangers they were exposed to in consequence of that neglect.

(5) With regard to St. Kitts-Nevis (page 32), it is stated that though "malaria is becoming common," and that though more than half the adult population harbour filaria (carried by mosquitoes) yet that "nothing whatever is done to destroy the breeding places of the mosquitoes." The Medical Officer writes in indignant terms, and, I think, justly so.

(6) For Grenada (page 31), it is said that "malarial fever has been much more prevalent and of a more serious type than usual." Beyond filling a swamp at St. George's and draining one at Carriacou, the medical officer reports that no anti- malaria sanitation has been effected. He says, somewhat sarcastically, I think, that want of means is urged." As much work may be done against malaria at little or no cost, this plea generally implies nothing but administrative incompetence.

(7) For the Somaliland Protectorate (page 23), there was an epidemic of malaria in 1906 due, apparently, to old concealed cesspits and drains. The medical officer says that 'no malaria should occur if rudimentary precautions with regard to vegetation and drainage were adopted." It is not stated whether any attempt has been made to adopt them.

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(8) In the Straits Settlements (page 12) mosquito-proof wards or mosquito curtains have been supplied to most of the native hospitals; a course of lectures on elementary hygiene was given to school teachers in 1906; and forty thousand dollars were spent by the Public Works Department in filling in swamps and building drains, besides undetermined sums allotted for such work by municipalities and by individuals. This is something; but no efforts to measure the amount of malaria, or its decrease, seem to have been made, and nothing is said about quinine admir- istration.

(9) With regard to the Federated Malay States (page 13), I am astonished to find that all reference to the brilliant anti-malaria campaigns at Klang and Fort

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C.O.885

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