Americus times-recorder. [volume] (Americus, Ga.) 1891-current, 1912-05-18
WOULD DO
Away With
HOOK-WORM
PURPOSE OF CONVENTION
Which Is to Meet Next
September


the worldwide problem of combating
the hookworm disease may be one Of
the results secured by the Fifteenth
International Congress on Hygiene
and Demography, which meets in this
city, September 1928, 1912, under the
auspices of the United States gov
eminent Scientists have run the
hookworm to it's lair since the Four
teenth congress, which was held in
Berlin in 1907, and the Forthcoming
meeting will offer the first opportun-
ity for hygienic experts from all the
countries of the globe to get together,
compare notes and adopt a Systematic
and uniform campaign against what
is regarded as the greatest scourge
which affects more than half the pop
ulation of the world
The latest statistics which have been
prepared by the Rockefeller sanitary
commission, contain figures which are
startling in their magnitude and il
lustrate the imperative need for a
union of all public health forces in
fighting the hookworm. In brief these
statistics show that hookworm infec-
ton belts the earth in a zone about
Sc degrees wide, extending from par
allel Sc north to parallel 80 south, and
that practically all countries lying be-
tween these parallels are infected. Of
the foreign countries from which the
commission received reports, fifty-four
are infected. In six of these coun-
tries-Wales, Germany, Netherlands,
Belgium, France and Spain-the in
lection is wholly, or chilly, confined to
the mines. In at least forty-six coun-
tries the infection is general and
widespread. These countries have an
area of 14,464,15S square miles with
919,858,243 inhabitants.
In addition the report of the COM
mission shows that eleven of our
own states with a population in excess
of 200OO,O0O are also in the infected
belt and that of the total population
of the world about 1,600,O00,O0O peo-
pie, in round numbers-about 94O, 0O0,-
600 live in countries where hookworm
disease is prevalent.
In the congress, DR.. c. w. Stiles,
of the public health and marine hos
pital service, and scientific secretary
of the Rockefeller commission, is ex-
pected to act as referee in one of the
principle sections devoted to the hook
worm discussion, and he, with other
members of the commission. is now
engaged in the preparation of the
! hookworm exhibit, forming a feature
of the exhibition on health which will
be an adjunct of the congress- Thu
commission also will assist the va
rious states of the United States III
which the commission has worked. in
! the preparation of cooperative ex-
hibit, which will show the extent of
The disease and the results which have
been accomplished by preventive meas
ures. The exhibit also will portray
conditions such as exist in Porto Rico
for example, where estimates have
been made that ninety out of every
hundred of the working people are in
fected; in Columbia, where ninety per
cent of the population living between
The sea level and 5000 feet ali,
are victims of the disease, and in In
dia, where from sixty to eighty per
cent. of the 30O,OO0,OOO inhabitants are
infected
The economic effect of the disease
will also be illustrated by charts
showing that in many instances fifty
per cent. of the efficiency of labor is
lost because hookworm enemies can
not do the work of physically sound
laborers-and that this loss in the
world each year runs into countlegs
millions of dollars.