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To further facilitate the training of officers, the Foundation assisted
financially in establishing the All-India Institute of Hygiene and Public
Health in Calcutta, but the maintenance and administration of the Insti
-
tute is carried on by the Government of India.
Up to the end of 1936, sixty medical and scientific officers had been given
fellowships. The candidates were proposed by the States of Mysore and
Travancore and by the Provinces of Madras, Coorg, Assam, Bihar, Central
Provinces, United Provinces, Delhi Province, the Punjab and by the Indian
Research Fund Association, the Calcutta School of Tropical Medicine, the
All-India Institute of Hygiene and Public Health and the King Institute
of Preventive Medicine, Guindy. With a few exceptions all fellows have
been Indians.
3. Research in Malaria.—Malaria is the most serious preventable disease
in India and although knowledge concerning it has been gained along many
lines, this knowledge is not yet sufficient to enable health departments to
effect control measures in rural areas within reasonable economical bounds.
Additional research is necessary. One of the Foundation's officers has
carried on malaria studies in co-operation with the Government in Mysore
State since 1927, and in 1936 another officer began studies in the Madras
Presidency with headquarters at the King Institute and with field station
s
in rural sections of the Presidency. Both of these activities are still in
progress. A malaria survey was carried out in a small portion of the
Poona area of the Bombay Presidency by two other Foundation officers
during the first seven months of 1937.
4. Demonstration Health Units. —Training and research would b
e
incomplete unless there were opportunities for putting into practice the
methods which have been studied. For that reason the International
Health Division has entered into agreements with various governments to
initiate what is known locally as health unit work. It is generally recog
-
nised that the usual district health work carried on in rural and semi-rural
areas in India is inadequate in many respects and in particular in the
relationship between the population and the number of workers. In
health unit work this criticism is met and a definite organization consisting
of a medical officer of health, health visitors, midwives and sanitary
inspectors are set up in a selected area with a predetermined population
and undertake all required public health activities. It is not feasible for
economic or other reasons to organise the whole rural area of a province
in this way but it is feasible and perhaps necessary for one such organisation
to be established in a province to be used as a training ground for the health
staff and for the development of methods of work and procedure. Co-
operative arrangements of this sort are now in operation in Mysore
,
Travancore, Madras Presidency, United Provinces and Delhi Province.
Plans for initiating similar work in other provinces are well advanced.
The usual co-operative period is five years, the Division's contribution being
on a yearly decreasing scale.
5. These three activities fit in with the general schemes of health work
now in progress in India. The operations of the International Health
Division in proportion to the total problem are small. This was under-
stood from the beginning and it is one of the reasons for deciding to co-