480 SCIENCE IN AFRICA 



legists or Other specialists who are sometimes able to undertake 

 original research in addition to the routine work passed on to them 

 by the hospitals. The principal centres are at Nairobi, Kampala, 

 Dar-es-Salaam, Lagos, Accra, Freetown, and, until recently, the 

 Human Trypanosomiasis Institute at Entebbe, now the Yellow 

 Fever Research Institute. A great difficulty of scientific work in 

 colonial conditions, mentioned often in this volume, is the dissemi- 

 nation of new knowledge to those to whom it would be valuable. 

 The Bureau of Hygiene and Tropical Diseases receives some 500 

 journals, and publishes in the Tropical Diseases Bulletin abstracts 

 of all articles of interest to Empire workers, and is the principal 

 source of information. An East African and a West African Medical 

 Journal are also published locally. It has been suggested, however, 

 that the service of information could be improved by the creation 

 of local advisory bureaux, conducted on a small scale. In Kenya 

 an honorary Library Committee has recently been inaugurated 

 under the auspices of the British Medical Association. Voluntary 

 readers study the literature and assist the headquarters library in 

 circulating useful information (East African Medical Journal 



In Northern Rhodesia the difficulties of making medical services 

 generally available to the populace are greater than in most terri- 

 tories on account of the large area, as big as France, and the com- 

 paratively small population, estimated at a million and a quarter. 

 The lack of roads and other means of communication add to this 

 problem. Accordingly, it is admitted and indeed stressed by 

 the Director of Medical Services (Northern Rhodesia 1936, 

 D.R.) that little has been done in regard to the health condi- 

 tions of natives. The large area for which each medical officer 

 is responsible makes the supervision of the outlying dispensaries, 

 etc. difficult. Of the 93 African medical orderlies, about 70 are 

 employed at stations where a medical officer is placed, and the 

 rest conduct dispensaries, mostly at the stations of district adminis- 

 trative officers. The hospital system includes 7 European hospitals, 

 of which the largest at Lusaka was opened in 1935, 12 native hos- 

 pitals, and 1 8 rural dispensaries, some of which rely largely on 

 supervision by the administrative department. 



In addition to the Government Service, the Roan Antelope, 



