Screen Salesman

The best way to fight malaria is not by drugs but by fighting mosquitoes. That is what Dr. Lowell T. Coggeshall of the University of Michigan concludes after helping Pan American Airways throw an airline across Africa in 60 days for the U.S. Army (TIME, Nov. 9)--a conclusion not new, but often forgotten under war conditions. Dr. Coggeshall's evidence, in the current War Medicine:

P:Neither quinine nor atabrine will suppress all infections. Among British forces near Panafrica's stations, about 30% of those on 0.3 gr. of quinine hydrochloride daily, and 23% of those taking 0.4 gr. of atabrine dihydrochloride weekly, developed clinical malaria (incidentally, "no toxic effects from atabrine were noted"). Panafrica had to abandon Accra, a bad malaria spot on Africa's Gold Coast. In spite of quinine, in about two months 46 out of 284 men occupying partially screened quarters had malaria.

P:After Panafrica's mosquito-proofing be gan, malaria was almost completely routed. In September 1942, only one man in 1,400 acquired malaria at an air station; in October, only three out of 1,820. Most striking lesson was the experience of two groups in the same compound less than a quarter of a mile apart. One had almost no protection against mosquitoes and depended on quinine. The other group had quarters "which were well mosquito-proofed. . . . Their quarters were also sprayed with an insecticide each evening and each man donned long trousers, a long-sleeved shirt and mosquito boots at dusk. ... In the first, unprotected group there were 87 cases of malaria in a population which varied between 90 and 100 men. In the second group there was only one case of malaria in an average strength of 60 men," and he got it at another camp.

Where the malaria rate is very high, where deadly falciparum malaria prevails, or "where measures of control are difficult to enforce," Dr. Coggeshall recommends drugs. But in most situations he believes in screens and sprays, would actually omit drugs. Now being released to teach malaria and mosquito control in Latin America and the U.S. was Walt Disney's short, Winged Scourge, made under the direction of the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs. Like Coggeshall, Disney comes out strongly for screens (see cuts, p. 46).

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.