Abstract
ACCORDING to the annual report for 1940 of the Public Health Commissioner with the Government of India, there were no abnormal outbreaks of disease in that year, and the common epidemic diseases such as malaria, smallpox and plague had been less prevalent than in 1939. The most important public health event was the third meeting of the Advisory Board of Health at Poona, where reports were made on the compulsory inoculation of pilgrims at festival centres against cholera and on the control of food adulteration. The Board recommended a plan for the provision of laboratories, including for each Province or State a central laboratory, regional laboratories for groups of districts and others for individual districts. The low incidence or complete absence of the common infectious diseases such as cholera, smallpox and plague in the prisons, of which the daily population was more than 13,000, showed the efficacious control of these infections. The report also contained a chapter on medical research, especially on nutrition, by the Indian Research Fund Association, field studies on cholera, plague and malaria, leprosy research carried out mainly at the Calcutta School of Tropical Medicine, and maternal mortality investigated at Calcutta, Bombay, Delhi and Madras. Cerebrospinal fever had occurred in sporadic form in many provinces.
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Public Health in India. Nature 149, 191 (1942). https://doi.org/10.1038/149191c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/149191c0