QUININE SHORTAGE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 68, 22 March 1933, Page 6

QUININE SHORTAGE.

PROBLEM OF MALARIA. (By A.W.) Among the inquiries recently conducted by that useful section of the League of Nations which concerns itself with the every-day welfare of humanity was one dealing with malaria and the world supply of quinine. It was found that the production of the drug is less than one-half of the actual requirements. This may astonish those who believe that the malarial problem was solved by the discovery of the part played by the anopheline mosquito in the spread of the disease and the useful effect of oil sprayed on the breeding places of the insect. That knowledge is of immense value; it has worked wonders in reforming the characters of -various ','white men's graves," but it does not give complete protection. Even the European, who transforms his house by means ot wire gauze- into a glorified meat safe and who sleeps under a mosquito net is not immune; indeed, it is safe to say that there are few residents in tropical Africa whose blood is not infected by the parasites. "The native, who walks bare-legged, and to whom mosquito netting is a white man's juju, is a chronic sufferer. The result is an appalling death rate and a still more appalling total of human disability. The League Committee estimates that in the infested regions of the world there are 800,000,000 sufferers from malaria and that the yearly death rate reaches two millions. An instance of the deadly wars humanity has to fight outside those of the battlefield. The problem of mosquito elimination is not so simple as is sometimes described, jo make it completely effective would entail the cutting out of all succulent vegetation within a certain radius of human habitation. What this would mean economically can be understood when it is known that the coconut palm is one of the most efficient mosquito nurseries, the crown of the plant holding a small reservoir of water all though the rainy season. The banana, the pineapple, and the sisal (hemp are aleo culprits. Hence the importance of quinine. The price of human existence is the keeping of the white corpuscles of the blood strong enough to destroy the invading parasites, and the effect of the medicine is to bring up reinforcements under competent "cneratehip. It is interesting to speculate what might have been the effect on the history of the world had quinine been available to the Eastern hemisphere in the days when mosquitoes from the Pontine marshes were destroying the power of Rome and when Greek civilisation was periston" , under successive epidemics of the- disease. It was late in the. seventeenth century before any knowledge of the remedy reached Europe. The tree from which quinine is derived is a nativo of Peru, hence the former name for ; t of Peruvian bark. The story goes that Jesuit priests working in the high Andean region in which the tree grows learned of its effect on the frequent .fevers from which they suffered from the Indians among whom they worked. Then there came a time- when the wife of the- Governor of Peru was at the point of death from the -same fever, and was miraculously cured by an infusion of the bark supplied by the Jesuit priests This lady, who was the Countess of Chinchon, took back the fame of the. medicine to her own country of Spain, and the tree was called after her, Chinchon, or, as it has now become, cinchona. The production of quinine is now almost a monopoly of the Dutch, who, in the islands of the East Indies, principally Java, harvest about nine-tenths of the world's supply. Conditions there are no more favourable to the growth of the cinchona than in the British possessions of Ceylon, India and Malaya, where it has also been cultivated. Its production in Ceylon, heing a commercial venture, its extent was governed by the profits obtained. When some years ago the coffee plantations in that island were ruined by a fungoid pest the growers turned to cinchona. So successful was its growth that the price of quinine fell from 12/ per ounce to 1/, with results more beneficial to malaria sufferers than to the planters, consequently large areas were felled to make room for the tea plantations which are the chief feature of Ceylon to this day. The Dutch met this fall in price by concentrating on increasing the quinine content of the bark and thus cheapening the cb&t of production, until they now have almost a monopoly of the- market. In India a system was followed which the League would like to see; established throughout the world. The cultivation of cinchona was taken up by the Government, which never entered the market as a commercial competitor, but confined itself to the production of quinine for sale at a low price to'the people of India. It is sold at all post oflices, a dose of seven grains being obtainable by the poorest sufferers for as little a-s one farthing. There is some extension of this system in East Africa, where a check is kept on any tendency to exploitation by commercial firms by the sale of quinine at all post offices. The introduction of this method has just about halved the former price of the medicine. Ailing natives are given free quinine on applying at hospitals, and large-scale employers of native labour can obtnin supplies of the drug at very low rates for administration to their staffs. The effective- dosage is so vast, however, being something like 400 grains for the complete eradication of each attack, thai the usual distribution is little more than a palliative.