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THE SECRETARY: If there is a belief that the Commission are going further with other diseases, it would always be an incentive.
MR. WICKLIFFE ROSE: We are expecting to do that with the men we have put on; we expect to recognize special ability.
CHAIRMAN: Does that exhaust all the points in this budget? THE SECRETARY; I think at this stage the remaining points are detail, which we could discuss with Mr. Rose alone.
matters of
CHAIRMAN: Does any member of the Committee wish to call attention to any other point before we pass from this?
SIR F. HODGSON: Are these cases to be dealt with in the patients' homes, or are they in certain instances to be brought to hospital, because the hospital accom- modation is deficient, and there may have to be some expenditure in enlarging the hospital accommodation if cases are to be taken there in large numbers.
MR. WICKLIFFE ROSE: Extreme cases will have to be taken to hospital, but the great majority of cases can be treated at home.
SIR HENRY MCCALLUM: There is no provision in those estimates for such things as improvement of water supply.
MR. WICKLIFFE ROSE: No, the sanitary side of this problem rests on the Gov- ernment. The Government is supposed to begin at once to increase its sanitary the organization, so that by the time this work is done it will be able to cover ground.
THE SECRETARY: I take it the Commission will be able to exercise a certain control in urging the Government to undertake sanitary work.
MR. WICKLIFFE ROSE: On the sanitary side, this thing has been done and will be done continually. In all our conferences that was a part of it. We have agreed to undertake to finance this work, and to examine the population, treating those found harbouring intestinal parasites. The Government realize that this work in the end would be futile unless sanitary reform is brought about which will prevent reinfection. While we are doing that we are trying to do it in an educa- tional way, teaching people what this thing is, and what it means, how they get it, and how they can avoid it. The work will be done among the people to teach them by demonstration, but in addition to all that educational work it is going to be necessary to organize effective sanitary machinery to prevent the polluting of the soil.
SIR HENRY MCCALLUM: Is not that for the private planter and the individual generally? Take Ceylon, the planters there are giving a lot of help in the way of treating the soil and bringing in private water supplies in enclosed pipes. All these things are being done at private expense, not at Government expense at all, If they did not do it.the Govern- and they are compelled to do so by legislation. ment would step in and do it themselves.
THE SECRETARY: The Secretary of State will call for periodical reports from all the Colonies in which the Commission is operating, and these reports, both as to treatment and sanitation, would be laid before the members of this Committee, and it would be open to this Committee to draw attention to any failure to improve sanitation. The reports would also go to the Commission, so that there would be ample opportunity to secure that the sanitary measures should proceed step by step with the remedial. That would meet your point, I think.
MR. WICKLIFFE ROSE: Quite so.
SIR HENRY MCCALLUM: Of course you find some difficulties in the East which Where Buddhism is prevalent the Buddhists you do not find in the West Indies.
will not destroy life in any form, even when it is a worm. I have seen them catch flies at the railway station, and let them all out at sundown because they would not kill them. They believe that in anything to do with the internal organs you are simply removing it, and not killing it.
CHAIRMAN: You carry your Buddhism in that point much further than any- where else.
You do not find it in China; it is all Con- SIR HENRY MCCALLUM: Yes. fucianism there. You cannot get your Buddhist servants to kill anything; they will not even kill a mosquito for you.
CHAIRMAN: I suppose provision will be made for having reports at stated intervals, in which attention could be called to sanitary questions; that would be rather important--to keep any island where the Council or the body selected was parsimonious up to the mark. Is not that part of it?
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THE SECRETARY: Undoubtedly periodical reports will be called for.
MR. WICKLIFFE ROSE: At what period is your office accustomed to call for reports on work of this kind?
THE SECRETARY: As a matter of course there is the annual medical report from each Colony.
MR. WICKLIFFE ROSE: Do you have such a thing as a quarterly report? THE SECRETARY: No.
MR. READ: In some cases we have half-yearly reports on the work of our research institutes and organizations of that kind.
THE SECRETARY: But the ordinary medical reports are annual reports. MR. READ: But this is rather a special thing, is it not?
THE SECRETARY: We are awaiting suggestions from Mr. Rose.
MR. WICKLIFFE ROSE: I should like very much to have a quarterly report;
we have them in the States, and the practice has been very helpful. That quarterly report is manifolded each quarter, and sent to all the workers, so that each man dealing with the work knows at the end of each quarter what the other workers are doing. In addition to that, I might suggest that our office has been extremely helpful in having full correspondence, being in daily touch with the work in eleven States, and if the man in Eastern Virginia develops an idea which will add to the efficiency of the work, every other man in the eleven States has possession of that and begins at once to put it into practice.
CHAIRMAN: Do you have work in all the States?
MR. WICKLIFFE ROSE: In eleven.
CHAIRMAN: Does that include Missouri?
MR. WICKLIFFE ROSE: No.
MR. READ: Quarterly reports could easily be arranged for.
SIR HENRY MCCALLUM: In such a quarterly report do you wish an account
of what is being carried on on every estate, or in the district generally?
MR. WICKLIFFE ROSE: In the district those quarterly reports always give the statistics, which are uniform; they give the fundamental things on the work, and then to that one adds all things of interest in his field.
CHAIRMAN: Of course your report would not be by plantation; it would be on a given area?
MR. WICKLIFFE ROSE: Yes.
SIR F. HODGSON: What is done in the schools in the Southern States? Is any action taken in instructing the children?
MR. WICKLIFFE ROSE: Yes, we are making some progress in that; for example, one of the first things done in the State of Virginia was to require that all the schools should have sanitary conveniences, and it may surprise you to know That that many of the schools in rural places were without such conveniences. was a great step forward as an object lesson to the children and to the people. The second step has been in the particular States to have the adoption of a book on preventive medicine to take the place of the old physiology. That has been done That in Virginia, and in North Carolina, and Texas, and several other States. has been supplemented by literature prepared for the teachers by the Department of Public Health, printed in some cases at the expense of the Department of Edu- cation, and distributed free of charge to the public schools.
CHAIRMAN: Are all these things done for the coloured schools as well as for the high schools?
MR. WICKLIFFE ROSE: Yes, it is just to say that the provision made for the coloured schools is not adequate, however, and has not been made what it ought to be.
SIR F. HODGSON: Something of that sort ought to be done in the schools in the West Indies.
MR. WICKLIFFE ROSE: Yes, that is contemplated in all these Colonies. CHAIRMAN: That should be a part of the sanitary expenses, or would it come under the educational budget?
SIR F. HODGSON: Under education.
THE SECRETARY: That is part of the work of the Government.
SIR HENRY MCCALLUM: Before I left the island I gave orders that all the coolie lines should be treated as object lessons.
SIR F. HODGSON: Do you think that something of the kind you have done in the Southern States in the way of leaflets could be adopted in the West Indies, say?
MR. WICKLIFFE ROSE: That is a thing I would have to think over.
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