Notes

Abstract

WE learn from the Pioneer Mail that the Government of India has issued a resolution concerning malaria in India. The Governor-General has had under consideration a proposal of the sanitary commissioner that a permanent organisation should be formed to inquire systematically into the problems connected with malaria. The number of deaths ascribed to fever throughout India approximates to four and a half millions, representing a mean death-rate of nearly twenty per thousand, and though this total is greatly in excess of the actual figure, owing to the practice of ascribing to “fever” deaths which are in reality due to other causes, yet it has been estimated that the actual death-rate from malarial fever is about five per thousand. The Governor-General has decided to convene a conference to examine the whole question, and to draw up a plan of campaign for the consideration of the Government of India and of the local governments. The conference will assemble at Simla on October 11, and it is expected that it will last about a week. The following is a rough outline of the subjects to be discussed:—(1) the distribution of malaria in India as a whole and in various provinces, with special reference to the sickness and mortality to which it gives rise; (2) the measures of prevention which have been adopted in the different provinces-drainage, mosquito destruction, the distribution of quinine-and the measure of success which has attended each; (3) the improvement of schemes of prevention, including the question of the most suitable form of quinine and the agency by which it can most effectively be distributed.