MEDICAL MIRACLE

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 104, 29 October 1935, Page 5

MEDICAL MIRACLE

CLAIMED BY ITALY

KEEPING,TROOPS WELL

The following article was written for the "New York Times" on September 13 by Senator Aldo Castellani, High Commissioner for Sanitation for Italy's East African colonies, who is in charge of the immense medical preparations in those possessions. For many years he was with the British Colonial and Medical. Service. He is a lecturer at the London School of Hygiene and a professor at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, and the University of Rome. ' A medical -miracle ■is happening in Italy's East African colonies of Eritrea and Somaliland as Premier Mussolini prepares for the totalitarian solution of the controversy with Ethiopia, writes Senator Castellani. ' j Since February large numbers of troops and .workmen have been poured into Eritrea. Before they started from Italy there were medical provisions in the colonies for only a few thousand men. They arrived in and passed through the unhealthful malarial tropical zones oh the Red Sea or they remained to work in those zones, probably the first white men to work steadily under such conditions. Yet the deaths that occurred among them—lso workmen and 130 soldiers— were no greater in percentage to their total number than would be the case were they living in certain zones in Europe. A, large proportion of the deaths were due not to disease but to sunstroke and heat. The explanation of this miracle lies in the tremendous. medical preparations made by Italy in her colonies. II Duce, having in mind the old saying that a colonial war in tropical climates costs more lives through disease than through battle, resolved that such would not be the case in the present instance. GREAT STORES. He sent a vast medical organisation, comprising. hundreds of doctors and nurses and literally shiploads of hospital materials, out to the East African colonies. Some portion of the workmen, were detailed for the building of hospitals. All soldiers, workmen, and civilians who go out to the colonies receive injections against typhoid, paratyphoid, and cholera. A squad .of experts is combating malaria in Eritrea and Italian Somaliland. Suspected water areas are covered with petroleum. Camps are fumigated. Each soldier must take his portion of quinine daily, even as long as fifteen days after leaving a suspected area; . Some cases of sunstroke occurred on ihe Eritrean coast, but there were very few recently.- There were also a few cases of dysentery, but none of cholera or of the plague. The sanitary situation is considered excellent. A mountain of medical products now has arrived in Eritrea and Somaliland. Twelve depots of sanitary equipment have been constructed at Massaua, five at Asmara. In addition, Eritrea now has hospitals. already equipped with 18.000 beds.. Still another , task awaits . us, however, which we are preparing for. This is the sanitary condition across the borders of Ethiopia. Owing to the absence of sanitary provisions' in Ethiopia, epidemics of various kinds are of frequent occurrence. An, epidemic 'of meningitis seems raging at the present moment in North-ern-Ethiopia. Present also are typhoid and dysentery. When our. soldiers go into that sick-ness-infested region they must be prepared in advance and protected as they go from a danger that is -worse than bullets.