Indian Health

Through most of his history, the American Indian has enjoyed health as good as his white cousin's, and in some ways, better. But in the last century the Indian has suffered grievously: some 350,000, of a total Indian population of 400,000, live on barren reservations in grinding poverty, existing from hand to mouth in crowded, filthy huts with animals and vermin. The scourges that the white man has been most successful in suppressing are especially deadly for the Indian, e.g., diphtheria, tuberculosis, dysentery. Any Indian born today on a reservation has a life expectancy of only 36 years against a neighboring white child's 61. Half the deaths (and nearly all the premature deaths) among Indians are from diseases that the white man's medicines can prevent or cure.

Last week the Federal Government reshuffled its table of organization in an attempt to do something about the plight of the Indians. It transferred responsibility for their health from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, in the Department of the Interior, to the U.S. Public Health Service, in the Department of Health. Education and Welfare. This might well be stronger medicine than it looks. The main trouble with the old setup was that doctors and nurses were hard to get for the Indians' 56 scattered hospitals and 21 health centers. With rare exceptions the buildings were old and ramshackle, and some were worse. Only the most exceptionally dedicated young doctor, fresh from interning, would sign up with Indian Affairs for a lifetime of tepee treatment.

Under PHS, on the other hand, doctors can expect rotation of duty every couple of years. Another attraction: since PHS is a uniformed service, membership makes the doctors draftproof. There will be no drastic reshuffling of personnel. The bureau's medical service had been going downhill so long that half its doctors were PHS men on loan; the other half now simply don PHS uniforms. But from the PHS manpower pool will come an immediate increase of 50% in doctors assigned, making a total of 200.

That will still be only half the doctor-patient ratio among whites. But in the long run, perhaps, not so many doctors will be needed: when Indians live long enough to show their stamina, they seem to have proportionately fewer cases of cancer and diabetes than whites.

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