HUNTING THE HOOKWORM.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 1 September 1924, Page 8

HUNTING THE HOOKWORM.

DR. LAMBERT IN SAMOA. Dr. Lambert, Field Director of the Rockefeller Foundation in the South Pacific, is in Apia, having journeyed there from Tonga, where lie completed recently a health survey of the Island Kingdom. At the conclusion of the survey the Tongan Government decided to open a campaign against hookAvorm disease and to raise the standard of sanitation in Tonga. This campaign will open in October, 1924. Dr. Lambert is in Samoa on imitation of the Administration, to inspect the public health Avork being done by the Department of Health for these islands and to gn r e Samoa the benefit of his adAdce and experience in hookworm control work. In the course of conversation With a Samoa Times man, Dr. Lambert remarked that Apia was as clean a town as any he had seen in the Pacific Islands. Incidentally it may be mentioned that already he ’has been in Papua, New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Santa Cruz, Gilbert and Ellice Groups/Fiji and Tonga. Wherever the doctor found Polynesians isolated (that is to say apart from contact Avith Asiatics) their hookworm infection invariably Avas of the “Nectar Americanus” variety. This really is the socalled African hookAvorm introduced to the United States by the original African sla\'es. It has been worked out by Dr. S. T. Darling that the Old World hookworm had his original home north of Lat. 20deg North; the home of the American variety is found south of this same line; Avherever this rule is departed from, the change has been effected by reason of the migrations of peoples. Thus it Mloavs that the hookworm. content, of a race or a country offers valuable anthropological information