Tropical Hygiene

Dr. Cilento Takes Charge of New Branch

THE Australian Federal Minister for Health, Major C. W. C. Marr, is also Minister in charge of the Island Terri tories; and he has combined his duties most advantageously in the creation of a new organisation, to be known as the Tropical Hygiene Branch.

Its purpose, as its name denotes, is to co-ordinate all the different activities in connection with medical research and preventive medicine which are proceeding within that part of the tropics governed by Australia. At the present moment, scientists and medical men are working for the limitation and elimination of disease in the Northern Territory, Papua, New Guinea, Nauru, Northern Queens land, and Norfolk Island. Some of their problems are peculiar to those localities; others —such as the incidence and preven tion of malaria —are common to all places north of the Tropic of Capricorn.

With the development of aviation a new responsibility has been thrown upon the Commonwealth Department of Health.

Formerly, ships coming from disease stricken countries were at sea long enough to allow the disease to develop before they reached Australian (or New Guinea) ports, thus making the work of medical inspection fairly easy. But the space devouring aeroplane stops all that —a machine may be in Australia twenty-four hours after leaving Malaya. What is entirely a new organisation has had to be created, therefore, to deal with this new danger to public health. This becomes part of the new Sub-Departmental or ganisation referred to.

A man who is very well known as a scientist and highly skilled in tropical medicine, Dr. Cilento, has been appointed to take charge of the new Tropical Hygiene Branch, under the immediate direction of the Chief Medical Officer and the Minister for Public Health. Dr.

Cilento will be the liaison officer between the medical men in the different tropical territories, in their war against disease.