464 SCIENCE IN AFRICA 



Secretariat. The annual budget of this organization amounts to 

 almost ;^63,ooo, of which some ^^40,000 is spent on staff. The 

 work carried out under its auspices on such subjects as sleeping 

 sickness, tuberculosis, leprosy, and public health services has been 

 of great value to Africa, and several publications on these subjects 

 (referred to later) embody reports of the different international 

 commissions organized by the League. Though the work of the 

 Malarial Commission in particular has so far been concerned 

 primarily with European countries, the conclusions reached will 

 be applicable throughout the world. 



Another valuable organ of the Health Organization is the Per- 

 manent Commission on Biological Standardization. An inter- 

 governmental conference on this subject was held at Geneva in 

 1935 and had, as its main object, the making of the international 

 standards better known and the encouraging of the various coun- 

 tries to establish national centres for the distribution of standards. 

 Already the influence exerted by this conference is resulting in 

 action; for example, in South Africa a new biological control 

 laboratory has been established in Capetown for work on the 

 standardization of vaccines, sera, etc. 



International conferences are organized from time to time: the 

 health conferences of 1932 and 1935 are mentioned below. The 

 results of such activities are published in the Qiiarterly Bulletin of 

 the Health Organization. The three-monthly Epidemiological 

 Reports and the weekly Epidemiological Record include vital statistics 

 from many countries, and valuable data from some of the African 

 territories are available in them. Dr. Mackenzie, a member of the 

 Health Organization, twice visited Liberia to study public health 

 problems (1932b), and a health survey of the population was 

 made by Dr. L. Anigstein (1936a, b and c; 1937a and b). 



The International Conference of Representatives of the Health Services 

 of African Territories and British India, held at Capetown in Novem- 

 ber 1932 under the auspices of the League of Nations and the 

 Office International, has promoted relations between medical 

 departments in adjacent territories and improved co-operation in 

 the several medical subjects. It was attended by representatives of 

 all the principal British territories, and of Angola and Mozambique, 

 but unfortunately the French and Belgian colonies were not 



