Abstract
THE annual report for 1942 of the South African Institute for Medical Research in Johannesburg indicates that this progressive Institute is playing its full part in the war effort. Staffed by 153 Europeans and 118 Africans, its activities are wide. In 1942, its buildings, which were no longer adequate to the large demands for serum for civilians and for army needs, were enlarged ; a branch laboratory was established at Bloemfontein. The erection of a large plant for the manufacture of dried human and other serum was made possible by a grant of 10,000 from Sir Ernest Oppenheimer and the Anglo-American Corporation of South Africa. The production of vaccines and sera for the troops has been very greatly increased ; staff are being trained for the administration of military hospitals and for their laboratories, and two mobile laboratories and nineteen military hospital laboratories have been established in the Union. Special military medical problems are being investigated. Other war activities of the Institute include vitamin assays, food analyses for military needs, the production of anti-gas-gangrene serum, the study of insect vectors of disease, plague, relapsing fever, typhus and yellow fever. The list of other researches being done is impressive, and the Institute's routine diagnostic work is evidently one of its most important activities.
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South African Institute for Medical Research. Nature 152, 746–747 (1943). https://doi.org/10.1038/152746d0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/152746d0