3
these officers were in that year removed from the list of touring officers. They
have now to inspect only such of the villages as lie on their way to dispensary
towns. I fear it will lead very rapidly to marked deterioration in both the
quantity and quality of vaccination work. In this connection the Deputy Com-
missioner, Bhandara, writes " The stoppage of Civil Surgeons' touring is a
dangerous experiment, but may be justified as a war measure. "
11. The Assistant Superintendents of Vaccination and Sub-Divisional
Medical Officers at Ellichpur, Basim and Khamgaon combined, inspected
55.35 per cent of the primary and 32.19 of the revaccinations performed
in the first year of the triennium, 55.39 and 33.00 in the second year and
54.94 and 31.46 in 1916-17.
I am not at all satisfied with the inspec-
tion work of these men. The Sub-Divisional Officers inspected very little
during the past two years. Perhaps frequent changes on account of the
withdrawal of these officers for military duty, or that they were much less
capable and experienced officers than in prewar days, hampered their inspec-
tion work, but in regard to Assistant Superintendents of Vaccination, I would
say that their work is very perfunctorily done. To swell their inspection
figures, these men hurry from village to village, sometimes inspecting 10 to
12 a day, merely looking at the arms of the vaccinated children collected
by the kotwars. This sort of work is quite useless. They should make
sufficiently long stays to find out whether the vaccinator vaccinated all the
available children, whether any remain unvaccinated, and if so, whether the vacci-
nator saw them and noted their names in the village registers, giving reasons
for leaving them unvaccinated. If every Assistant Superintendent of Vaccination
were to inspect 3 to 4 villages a day in the manner indicated above, he
would be able to satisfactorily inspect about 5 to 6 hundred villages during
the vaccination season.
I hope Civil Surgeons will impress on their
subordinates the necessity for such systematic inspections, since Civil Surgeons
have now no chance of devoting their personal attention to this matter. Some
Assistant Superintendents of Vaccination are in the habit of vaccinating with
their own hands the children left unvaccinated by the vaccinators. This may
be unsound and tend to encourage lazy vaccinators. Assistant Superintendents
should bring such cases at once to notice and have the delinquents fined.
12. The Civil Surgeon, Jubbulpore, suggests reduction in the number of
days the Assistant Superintendents of Vaccination are expected to be out on tour,
and says that they should be allowed to spend at least 7 days in every month
at the head-quarters station, as their long tours in one direction keep them ignorant
of what is going on in the other. As these men have to remain on tour only
135 days out of the 182 days of the vaccination season, the Civil Surgeons can
order them to spend the remaining 47 days at head-quarters. No reduction
in the number of days fixed for their tour of inspection is therefore necessary.
Civil Surgeons should arrange the Assistant Superintendents' tours and not
merely allow these men to do as they please in making out the season's
programme.
The Civil Surgeon, Saugor, has let the Sub-Assistant Surgeons inspect
vaccination work in villages situated within a ten-mile radius of their dispensaries,
so that the Assistant Superintendent of Vaccination may be able to devote more
time to the inspection of the distant villages. The procedure should not have
been adopted without reference to the Inspector-General of Civil Hospitals, as
the Local Administration has ordered the withdrawal of Sub-Assistant Sur-
geons from all vaccination work except when small-pox is prevalent.
Percentage of success in
primary and revaccination.
13. The percentage of success in primary operations recorded by
vaccinators during the past 3 years, was 97.22, 97.58
and 97.71, while the Assistant Superintendents of Vacci-
nation found on inspection 96.89, 97.23 and 97.41 and Civil Surgeons 96.68,
97.93 and 97.97.
These figures seem satisfactory, and show that the vaccinators generally
do not falsify their records, but during the course of my inspection in Municipal
towns, I found many cases with two marks only. Four good cicatrices should