MALARIA IN BENGAL

Greymouth Evening Star, 31 July 1929, Page 9

MALARIA IN BENGAL

STORY OF DEVASTATION.

An illustration of the devastation caused by malaria is contained in the annual report of the Ross Institute and Hospital for Tropical Diseases. Reviewing the results of investigations made during the winter by Sir Malcolm Watson and Major Lockwood Stevens, it says: Malaria is steadily spreading through many parts of - Bengal. Within living memory hundreds of villages have been decimated, thousands of acres of once prosperous and highly cultivated land have been abandoned, populous towns have been reduced to the status of miserable fever-stricken villages, stately mansions have as their sole inhabitants the wild pig and the leopard, and the jungle is creeping in to reign once more over a land from which it was driven thousands of years ago. The malaria of Bengal may well be described as a great tragedy. There is much controversy on the cause of the malaria in Western Bengal. Many hold that malaria has been increased by the embankments which have interfered with the natural flooding of the delta. They claim that, where the land is flooded annually by the rivers of the delta, there is a surprising immunity from malaria,, and that malaria is specially intense ‘.where railways, canals ,roads and embankments have killed the rivers or reduced their flow. Tho other view is that the malaria is due to insufficient drainage of the land. Its supporters claim that what drainage has done to banish malaria from other lands it can do for Bengal.

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