Annual medical and sanitary report / Nigeria.

  • Nigeria. Medical Department
Date:
[1932]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Annual medical and sanitary report / Nigeria. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    44/140 (page 30)
    In Lagos, in spite of numerous minor improvements, the slaughter-houses have lagged far behind in the general sanitary progress of the town and a modern abattoir is urgently needed. There is some hope that this may materialise next year. Regulations for the transport of meat from slaughter-house to meat markets by suitable motor vehicles came into force during the year. The butchers petitioned the Town Council asking that municipal transport be provided for the conveyance of the meat and this was eventually arranged at a charge of one shilling per carcase. A large consignment of imported dried fish (stock-fish) was seized and condemned during the year owing to heavy infestation with Dermestes vulpinus. Registration of corn-mills was introduced in Lagos in 1932. There were thirty-one premises so registered and, on the whole, their sanitary condition was good. They are small places to which customers bring their corn to be ground and it is not usually stored on the premises. The problem of the numerous street markets in Lagos and their menace to health remains unsolved. A markets committee appointed during the year held numerous sittings. The result of the committee’s findings had not been published by the end of the year. Throughout the country aerated water factories and bakehouses are subjected to periodical inspection by the health authorities. The Senior Health Officer stationed at Kaduna states that food has never been so plentiful or so cheap as it is at present, the prices of food¬ stuffs having fallen to a far greater extent than those of other local produce. Consequently so far as the necessities of life are concerned, the natives of the Northern Provinces are as well off as they ever were. Some distress has occurred amongst artisans, motor drivers, and clerks unemployed owing to the retrenchment of Government departments and business firms. Numerous analyses of native foodstuffs were carried out during the year by the Dietetics Pathologist. One striking result was the high mineral content of the leaves of the Ivuka (Adansonia digitata), which are much used by the people in their stews. A calcium content of 2.6 per cent, was found in the sun-dried leaves. In consequence of a high sickness and death rate in the Kano Native Administration prison in 1931 a new diet scale was introduced in accordance with the recommendations of the Dietetics Pathologist, which appears to have had a very beneficial effect on the health of thei prisoners. The dietary previously in use was found to be very unbalanced and extremely deficient in mineral salts and vitamins A and B. The staple food in Kano prison is guinea-corn. Subsequently diet scales were prepared for prisons in which cassava and sweet potato respectively form the main bulk of the ration. An article on “ Diet in Schools ” by Dr. W. E. McCulloch was published in the West African Medical Journal for October, 1932. Great importance is attached to the institution of school and prison gardens and stress is laid on the desirability of growing in such gardens the more valuable indigenous vegetables of the country rather than imported ones which are unfamiliar and often distasteful. If this is done, children are more likely to put into practice in their villages in after life the lessons they have learned in the school garden. An important event was the formation during the year of a Dietetics Committee to secure co-operative action by the Agricultural, Forestry, Veterinary, Geological and Medical Departments with a view to improving the quality of the foods eaten in Nigeria.