Field experiments in malaria control / Wickliffe Rose.

  • Wickliffe Rose
Date:
1919]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Field experiments in malaria control / Wickliffe Rose. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    among children under 15 years of age, and therefore preys on the vitality of the race during the important period of physical and mental growth. Its effects, moreover, are cumulative. They are handed on from one generation to the next, and become to the com- munity an increasing handicap in all things that make for social development. And these results are wide- spread. Malaria in mild form is almost world-wide in distribution, and in its malignant form belts the globe in a broad zone including tropical and semitropical regions. Of the 1,600,000,000 inhabitants of the earth, more than half live in countries in which the infection is prevalent and constitutes a serious menace to life and health and working efficiency. And these conditions prevail in spite of the fact that malaria is a controllable disease. It is twenty years since the discovery by Ross, confirmed and extended by the Italian scientists and others, definitely estab- lished the life cycle of the malaria parasite and thus gave us the facts on which to base an intelligent pro- gram of control. It is well understood, not only by scientists but also by intelligent laymen, that the spread of the infection may be prevented by mosquito control, by protecting people from being bitten by mosquitoes, or by destroying the parasite in the blood of the human carrier. It has been shown, moreover, by repeated demonstrations that by application of any one of these measures or of any combination of them the amount of malaria in a community may be reduced indefinitely. There are few diseases that present so many vulnerable points of attack and none perhaps the control of which may be made more definite or certain. Still the infec- tion persists. And still we refer to it as the chief obstacle to the development of civilization in the tropics. Comparatively little has been done during these twenty years to bring into general operation the practical measures for which the scientific basis has been so well laid. THE ITEM OF, COST AS A DISCOURAGING, FACTOR Nothing has done more to discourage the general application of antimalaria measures than the item of cost. Many of the early demonstrations that attracted wide attention were relatively expensive. Watson’s brilliant results in the Federated Malay States, 1901
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