Proceedings of the Hon'ble the Liéutenant-Governor of the Panjab, in the Home (Medical and Sanitary)
Department, No. 877, S., dated Simla, the 27th July 1897.
READ—
The Sanitary Commissioner's Report on Vaccination in the Punjab for the year 1896-97.
REMARKS.—The Report was due in the Secretariat on the 1st of July. It
was received in good time.
Paragraphs 1 to 9.
2. A feature of the present Report is the diminution in the total number
of operations performed, which may practically be
assigned entirely to a reduction in the work done
by the District Staff. The number of primary vaccinations credited to the
District Staff is 28,210 less than last year, and the number of re-vaccinations
performed by them has fallen-off by 16,055. Brigade-Surgeon-Lieutenant-Colonel
Roe expresses his concurrence with Civil Surgeons in attributing the decrease in
the number of primary vaccinations to the prevalence of scarcity, and of small-
pox, and to emigration, but Sir Mackworth Young thinks it cannot be attributed
to any of these causes.
3. A close examination of the figures of the work done both by the
Special and District Staffs in those parts of the Province which are known to
have felt most severely the pinch of scarcity, particularly in the Delhi Division,
does not permit of the acceptance of the argument that famine is responsible
for the reduction in the outturn of work for the Province. In Hissar there is
practically no diminution, and in Rohtak and Delhi a decided increase, in
primary vaccinations by the District Staff ; while the decrease in Gurgaon and
Karnal is more than counterbalanced by the work done by the Special Staff in
the Palwal and Panipat Tahsils.
4. Next, though the prevalence of small-pox might no doubt be the
effect of a decrease in the number of vaccinations, His Honor cannot regard it
as the cause. He thinks that during an epidemic there would naturally be
a tendency to resort freely to vaccination, and he believes that even after small-
pox has developed, vaccination is held by medical authorities to have a favourable
effect on the course of the disease. He observes, moreover, that in Gurgaon, the
district which had the highest death-rate but one from small-pox during 1896,
the number of vaccination operations rose considerably, if the work of the
Special Staff be counted. The case in Ludhiana and in Bannu was similar.
In Jullundur, on the other hand, where the fall in the number of primary
vaccinations performed by the District Staff was marked, the death-rate from
small-pox was only 0.89 per 1,000, as against 4.49, 3.67 and 3.25 in the
three districts above named respectively. Sir Mackworth Young will, however,
be glad to learn from the Sanitary Commissioner his reasons for holding that
vaccination operations in the Punjab have a tendency to decrease in number
during the prevalence of small-pox.
5. The third cause assigned for the reduction in the number of opera-
tions is emigration. Whatever migrations from district to district may have
taken place, there are no grounds, so far as the Lieutenant-Governor is aware, for
supposing that emigration on any but a very small scale has taken place from
the Province as a whole. On the contrary, it is believed that there has been
some small immigration of a temporary character into the Southern Punjab
from the neighbouring States of Rajputana.
Paragraph 10 and Appendix A.
6. It is a matter for congratulation that the total number of vaccin-
ations performed by the Special Staff, viz. 101,893,
is the largest that has ever been done by that staff
in any one year ; but even after allowance has been made for the consideration
that particularly favourable localities are probably selected for the special opera-
tions, this satisfactory outturn only makes it the harder to understand the
diminution in the work of the District Staff. Except in Gujranwala, where