Malaria

Important Conference In Singapore

A CONFERENCE of importance to resi dents of the Pacific Territories will be held in Singapore in March, when there will be a meeting of medical experts from all parts of the world to exchange views on the subject of malaria.

The conference has been called by the League of Nations. It is expected that Australia and her Territories will have two representatives. One, it is expected, will be Dr. Cilento, who has made a special study of tropical hygiene, and the other will be one of the medical staff in New Guinea, who will be nominated by the New Guinea Administration.

The methods of treating and preventing malaria have made enormous advances during the past twenty years, and there are those who believe the time is ap proaching when this scourge of the tropics, which renders so large a propor tion of the earth’s surface dangerous to natives and uninhabitable permanently by Europeans, will be definitely controlled.

Much has been achieved by the ceaseless war upon the anopheles mosquito and the eradication of his breeding places: and much more by the discovery of better prophylaxis. Even within the last three or four years we have seen the use of quinine, as a prophylactic, partly sup planted by plasmoquine; and in the last twelve months many people in the Terri tories are putting their faith in the latest discovery, atebrin, which is claimed to be better than plasmoquine.