Anti-Yaws Campaign

In Samoa

INTERESTING details of the campaign against yaws are contained in the last Annual Report of the Samoan Adminis tration, for the year ended March 31, 1933.

A village-to-village campaign was con ducted during the year, and 74,088 in jections of neoarsphenamine were given.

First injections numbered 38,166, af fecting 86.5 per cent, of the native popu lation, but this number included many not infected who presented themselves for prophylactic reasons. The number found infected by yaws in any one of its three stages represented 59.16 of the popula tion.

The campaign is being continued and is being conducted in conjunction with the Rockefeller Foundation of New York under the direction of Dr. S. M. Lambert, the Foundation’s Medical Director in the Western Pacific.

By the time the campaign is completed it is expected that yaws will have de creased considerably in the Territory.

A complete sanitary survey of the main Islands of Samoa is being made with a view to preventing soil pollution.

Among the 40 students at the Central Medical School in Suva (where a three years’ course produces native medical practitioners) there are four Samoans studying for the diploma entitling them to practice medicine and surgery in Western Samoa.