OVERCOMING MALARIA

Greymouth Evening Star, 7 November 1944, Page 6

OVERCOMING MALARIA

• MR. FQRDE’SJDISCLOSURES WELLINGTON, November 7. In a statement on the anti-malarial campaign, Mr Forde' said . that Italian and United States Forces had worked in close .co-operation and adopted similar measures. The search for the ideal drug to replace quinine, of which supplies had been lost through the Japanese conquest of Java, continues, but the present low malaria rates in the, field prove that the atabrin drug discovered by the Germans is more than an effective substitute. One of Australia’s contributions to the attack on malaria was the establishment of an Army research unit at Cairns, where volunteers were bitten by mosquitoes infected by malaria to test the effectiveness of atabrin .and other drugs. Mr Forde mentioned that in 1942, in the Buna-Gona campaign, malaria reduced the forces in action to ten per cent, or less of the fighting strength. In the last New Guinea campaign in the Markham Valley and Finschafen, sick casualties exceeded battle casualties by 15 to 1,. and 00 per cent, were by malaria. Tn the last six months, wastage from malaria was still further reduced, mainly owing to the use of atabrin. Only some twenty or thirty cases of malaria a week are now being admitted to hospitals in New Guinea. With regard to other diseases, he said that by the use of repellants acting against mites which transmitted ’ scrub typhus, this has been reduced by over 95 per cent. There were now only occasional cases. Dysentery had never been a. very big problem in New Guinea owing to the use of sulphaguanidine. U.S.A. ACHIEVEMENTS NEW YORK, November 5. The incidence of malaria in the United States Army was reduced by 75 per cent, since the beginning of the war. The death rate from all diseases was the lowest ever recorded, being only five per cent, of the rate in the first World War. This was revealed by an army surgeon general, Major-General Norman Kirk, at a conference of military surgeons. The death rate from malaria was now one-hundredth of one per cent. The drastic reduction in malaria, formerly one of the most serious diseases menacing the army, resulted from proper discipline and control measures—the use of repellants, the wearing of proper clothing at night-time, the use of atabrin as a suppressive, the use of D.D.T. insecticide, and also draining, filling nad oiling procedures by control units.

Other experts revealed that the Army and Navy Medical Corps has each developed an artificial plastic eye which moves in co-ordination with the natural eye and is almost indistinguishable from it. The Navy issues plastic eyes in sets of three, one for daytime wear, another with smaller pupil for nightime, and a third, slightly glazed and bloodshot, for periods of an acute hangover.