3
will disappear, while if the work is being smoothly and effectively done your
department may rely on the cordial support of the District authorities, who
must be unanimous in their desire to push forward a scheme which is expected
to rescue the masses from the ravages of a loathsome disease.
8. Looking at the work in the different districts as commented on by you
in paragraphs 22 to 40, and excluding Sambalpur, where, as already noted, the
arrangements are exceptionally complete, the Chief Commissioner would have
been glad of more information as to what actual area in each district has been
brought under vaccination. You mention that ''the principle of working in
certain defined areas has not perhaps been sufficiently adhered to." This, how-
ever, is what should have been systematically aimed at. Some good no doubt
results from a Vaccine staff working in scattered villages, but in effectiveness
an arrangement of this kind cannot compare with devoting the energies of the
Establishment to a compact area and endeavouring therein to carry vaccination
into every house. An area protected in this way is believed to be fairly free
from the outbreak of an epidemic, and this fact once proved to the people, they
will be found eager enough for their villages to be enclosed in a Vaccine circle.
9. It would have been possible with existing Establishments in almost
every district to have an area with the head-quarters Station as a centre, within
which vaccination might by degrees have been made so nearly universal as to
prevent small-pox within certain limits ever again raging as an epidemic. This
does not seem to have been generally done, and therefore it cannot be said that
local Establishments have everywhere been utilized in the most effective manner.
In the past year the operations in Jabalpur, Bhandara and Nimar show good pro-
gress considering the agency available; in other districts, and markedly in Nagpur,
Raipur, Hoshangabad and Narsinghpur, the Chief Commissioner considers that
more might have been done ; while in-Sagar, Mandla, and Damoh the resutls are
altogether unsatisfactory.
10. The Chief Commissioner has before him separately your scheme for
placing Vaccine operations in each district on a proper footing, and as a further
Provincial grant will be made for Establishments, some real progress in the next
few years may be confidently expected. Three or four more districts will be com-
pletely protected by having a staff of Vaccinators sufficient to undertake their
whole area, and in the others a defined area will be taken up and vaccination all
through it systematically carried on.
11. There has been some progress in the amount of vaccination which alto-
gether has been got through by the local Establishments. There were 89,734
operations, compared with 77,074 in the previous year ; and taking Government
and local Establishments together the results were as follows :—
Local Establishments ... ...
Government Establishments ...
Total ..
89,734
41,265
130,999
vaccinations.
„
„
In the previous year there were in all 122,172 operations. The percentage of
successful cases has also been larger, and the table in your paragraph 44 shows
that as regards general success and cost, the work in these Provinces compares
not unfavourably with other parts of India.
12. Of the mortality from smallpox you have treated in your Sanitary
Report with details illustrating the extent to which vaccination may be considered
to have succeeded in diminishing the number of deaths especially in the pro-
-ected districts, and thus met the call for specific information on this subject made in