The Marietta journal. (Marietta, Ga.) 1918-1944, 1919-12-19
SAVING MANY MILLIONS
BY CONQUERINC MALARIA

"A most serious and de-vitalizing
disease" says the Townsville Times
Enterprise of malaria, an unusual
amount of which has ben observed
this year in communities that failed
TO tale timely measures of proven
ton. And our South Georgia con-
temporary rightly adds that the result
tain harm cannot be figured in dol
lars and cents"
While all disease is costly beyond
reckoning, malaria takes particular
ly heavy toll of human efficiency and
weltbeing. The percentage of
deaths among its victims may be re-
iatively small, but it's debilitating
effects are undeniably grave. lie re-
tards both the physical and mental
growth of children who become its
prey, making them backward in
school and more and more sluggish
as they pass to years of maturity. So
seriously does it interfere with labor,
that far-sighted industrial concerns in
malaria districts are spending money
without stint to safe guard their
working forces against it's infection.
The sure and permanent preven-
tive is the adjustment of the breed
ing places of the anopheles mosquito
by which the malady is transmitted.
When Georgia's swamp and wet lands
have been reclaimed by drainage
there will be no source of malaria
left in this State, save such as indi-
vidual or neighborhood efforts could
easily cope with. Numbers of dis
trlcts have demonstrated the truth
OF this, much to their satisfaction and
profit. In certain Western States
great areas where the malarial sick
ness and death rate once ran high
have been entirely purged; and it was
the Panama Canal zone, under the
peculiarly difficult conditions of a tro
pical country.
A particularly interesting chapter
has been added to the record by the
United States Public Health Service
during recent wartime activities. In
his valuable report on the subject Mr..
j. A. LePrince, Senior Sanitary En-
gineer, shows that malaria control
work was carried out in forty-three
separate areas in fifteen states, in ad-
dition to the environments themselves,
representing a total territory of
twelve hundred square miles.
where environments have been To-
Gated in VIGOROUSLY malarial sec
tions," the report goes on to say,
"very little malaria has been con-
tracted by enlisted men, and the
malaria sick rate among enlisted men
IN camp has been much lower than it
would have been had they stayed at
home. The commanding medical of
ficers at the environments report mos
quitoes as being scarce at nearly all
camps, and Anopheles seldom seen,
except at two of the aviation camps
near rice field areas. When the army
and navy cantonment sick rate fig
ures are published it will undoubtedly
be shown that due to proper mos
quito control measures, practically
very little, and in many instances, no
malaria has ben contracted at camps
located in regions noted for malaria
AT some of the extra cantonment
areas this work has now been going
on for two seasons, and many prom
inent local physicians have informed
me that there has been a remarkable
reduction in the malaria sick rate of
the civil population in and near their
cantonment towns. This demonstra-
ton work, distributed over a wide
area, has protected a civil popula-
ton of about 1,750,00O, and an
average, constantly changing, mill
tary and naval population of 100000,
and should lead to better and more
extended campaign.
Happily the campaign upon this
line did not end with the war. The
Federal Public Health Service is pre-
pared to aid any community in con-
quering the malarial foe, to the ex-
tent if need be of sending a special
sanitary engineer to make survey
and give counsel. Georgia's State
Department of Health also is ready
and eager to assist in local problems
OF this nature. There is no necessity,
then of any country submitting to
this wasteful malady. If duly spent