Health in the United Kingdom dependencies.

  • Great Britain. Central Office of Information. Reference Division
Date:
1956
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Health in the United Kingdom dependencies. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Today there are highly developed public health organizations in the more developed territories and in most centres of population throughout the dependencies. The attack on disease meets its greatest problems in the rural areas and especially in the rural areas of the poorer territories. Here the handicaps are economic—due to the relatively low income per head of the population; physical—due to sparse populations and irregular settlement over large areas; and educational—due to lack of knowledge of proper hygiene among the population. The attack on ill health thus takes its place in the general effort to improve the physical and social environment in all its aspects and is related to all the other programmes for economic and social development being undertaken in the dependencies. Progress during the last 20 years has been appreciable and in some instances remarkable. A large measure of control has been established over many of the diseases, particularly those peculiar to tropical countries, which have caused high morbidity and mortality rates in the Colonial territories.! In this control antibiotics and other drugs and insecticides have played a prominent part. Malaria is no longer the terrible scourge it once was, although its effects, especially in Africa, are still serious. The malaria campaigns in British Guiana, Cyprus and Mauritius were in large part responsible for the encouraging recent improvements in health. Yellow | fever, once a great killer, is now largely reduced to a few sporadic cases among people who have not been inoculated. Smallpox now seldom reaches epidemic proportions. The incidence of trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness), which is a particularly serious problem in Nigeria, has been much reduced by special area clearance measures. The treatment of leprosy has been revolutionized by the use of drugs developed during and since the second world war. The work of control of epidemic and endemic diseases has brought into clearer perspective the amount of ill health due to poverty, ignorance and malnutrition which exists in many dependencies. Tuberculosis, an urban disease, is now one of the greatest causes of sickness and death, and large-scale BCG vaccination campaigns have been undertaken, among other places, in the Eastern dependencies, the Caribbean and Aden. Much research is being undertaken on nutrition and nutritional deficiency diseases and its practical application is steadily improving the quality of diets. Throughout the dependencies there has been an expansion of medical facilities and a steep rise in health expenditure by governments to provide these facilities.2 An important part in financing increased expenditures is played by grants under the United Kingdom Colonial Development and Welfare Acts. Grants from this source for medical and health services between 1946 and 1955 totalled just under £17 million, some £3 million of this total being for the year 1954-55. Grants for work on nutrition for the period 1946-55 amounted to over £173,000. As a result of improved health and the concomitant decline in death rates (including, perhaps even more significant, infant mortality rates), populations and life expectation are increasing everywhere in the Colonial territories.* 1See Statistical Appendix (p. 32), Table I. *See Statistical Appendix (p. 33), Table II. 8See Statistical Appendix (pp. 33-35), Tables III, IV, and V. ,.
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