Bengal public health report.

Bengal (India). Public Health Department

Date:: [1939]

Credit: Bengal public health report. Source: Wellcome Collection.

163/370 page 153

$The foregoing* table again brings into prominence the same fact which has been observed from year to year that the attention of the sanitary stah of all local bodies appeared to be focussed primarily on the control of adulteration of mustard oil. From the point of view of control of dangerous adulteration, i.e., adulteration with non-edible and poisonous oils there may be justification of mustard oil getting somewhat more than the due attention but that is almost all that can be said in support of this persistent practice. Mustard oil, it has been argued, is a product used by poor and rich alike. Truly so and it is also the principal fatty food in the dietary of' the poor as well as of the middle class people of the province. Let there l)e the proper efiort to ensure a supply of pure mustard oil but at the same time let the attention paid to the control of milk and milk products be commensurate with the importance of these very greatlv essential food-stufis. Control of adulteratio7i of milk.—The lactometer test for milk is no doubt a quick method and also a convenient method but the claim put forward that it is also an effective method in controlling adultera¬ tion of milk is far from correct. It shows only the specific gravity of milk and as such reliance on it to a large extent for the control of adulteration would for evident reasons be undesirable. The percentage of adulteration of milk is very high and striking in all local bodies although as the numbers of samples analysed are not large no inference about the real extent of adulteration can be justifiably made. Eivamination of clinical materials.—Chemical and bacteriological examinations of blood, sputum, stool, urine, throat swab as carried out at the clinical sections association with some of the district laboratories were as follows: — District laboratory. Niunber of specimens examined. Blood. Sputum. Urine. Faeces. Pus. Throat swab for K. L. B. Other samples. Birbhum 94 11 133 34 • • • • 47 Jalpaiguri 312 10 69 28 2 4 7 Khulna 372 61 110 127 40 7 19 Rangpur 133 31 58 19 5 • • • • 131. Model Health Unit.—The genesis and the object of the institution have been recorded in the last year’s report. The unit comprises an area of 36*6 square miles with a population of 42,266 souls. It was opened by Lady Reid on the 26th March 1939. Its work has not yet been fully systematised. The registration of \ital events and the control of epidemics are still carried out by the Sanitary Inspector of the rural public health circle in the same method as obtains in other rural areas. In the unit area, 1,422 births and 1,025 deaths occurred in 1939 yielding a birth rate of 33*6 and death rate of 24*2 per mille. Compared with the provincial rates the unit rates were higher both in births and' deaths—in births by 5 per cent, and 11$

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