( 4 )
the Health Officer has done very little inspection. The Deputy Sanitary
Commissioners inspected 1,516 villages, against 1,032 in the previous year.
The increase is satisfactory.
13. Vaccination is perhaps the least successful of all the departments
under the Bengal Government, and the Lieutenant-Governor regrets to observe
that there is in this report no indication of any consciousness of this failure—
and no hint of any special efforts by the Sanitary Commissioner to ascertain
and remedy its causes. The comparatively small number of operations in
Bengal is the fact which has to be explained, testifying as it does to the
unpopularity of the process. The attitude of the people towards vaccination
is described in the reports, as it has often been described before, as one of passive
acceptance with very strong objections to pay for the operation. The Sanitary
Commissioner would either extend the compulsory provisions of the Act throughout
rural areas, or make vaccination free. Compulsory vaccination does not,
however, exist in other provinces to a large extent, and they have nevertheless
been more successful than Bengal. As to making vaccination free, and enter-
taining all the vaccinators as paid servants of Government, although the fee of
2 annas which has to be paid must tend to diminish the number of willing patients,
it is hard to believe that it is the sole or even the main deterrent. It is more probable
that the fact to be explained is due to distrust in vaccination as a prophylactic,
and the principal duty of the Sanitary Commissioner is to remove that
distrust by operating against its causes. If the percentage of success was really
any thing like as high as it is reported, the fact of immunity against small-pox
would be patent to the eyes of every one, and vaccination would be sought
after.
We have seen how popular inoculation against cholera is, even
when its results are not firmly established in the eyes of scientific men, and
there ought to be the same rush after vaccination instead of the present
difficulty to induce people to avail themselves of it. The Lieutenant-Governor
trusts that the Sanitary Commissioner will set himself to discover the causes of
the distrust felt, and, so far as the distrust is justified, to remedy and remove
them by insisting that the lymph used by vaccinators is really what it ought to
be, and that he will be effectively supported by the efforts of all Civil Surgeons
and District Officers in the Province. The supply of good lymph, whether in
tubes from the two central depôts or direct from calves operated on locally,
will probably effect a considerable improvement,
By order of the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal,
C. W. BOLTON,
Offg. Secy. to the Govt. of Bengal.
No. 3699S.
COPY of the Resolution forwarded to the Sanitary Commissioner, Bengal,
for information.
Circular No. 38S.
COPY of the Resolution, with a copy of the notes, forwarded to all Commis-
sioners of Divisions for information.
No. 3700S.
COPY of the Resolution, with a copy of the notes, forwarded to the
Inspector-General of Civil Hospitals, Bengal, for information.
By order of the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal,
N. BONHAM-CARTER,
Under-Secretary to the Govt. of Bengal.
CALCUTTA,
The 5th September 1894.
C. E. G.—Reg.No. 3367C—1,204—6-9-94.