486 SCIENCE IN AFRICA 



assistants in training, in Lagos, where a course was established 

 recently. The other subordinate African staff of nearly 700 in- 

 cludes dispensers, nurses, mid wives, etc. In the health service 

 there are 15 qualified medical officers of health, etc., and 37 Euro- 

 pean sanitary superintendents. The African subordinates include 

 196 sanitary inspectors and vaccinators. The laboratory service, 

 under Dr. E. C. Smith, is centred at the African Hospital, Lagos, 

 and the Research Laboratories at Yaba, including the former 

 Rockefeller Yellow Fever Laboratory. There are subsidiary centres 

 at several of the principal hospitals. The European staff consists of 

 6 pathologists and 7 technical assistants, and there are about 23 

 African laboratory attendants. The sleeping sickness service has, 

 besides the director, 9 medical officers, an entomologist, and an Afri- 

 can subordinatestaff of some 14 dispensers, nurses, and attendants. 

 There are 1 2 European hospitals, the largest being at Lagos. The 

 African hospitals in 1 936 numbered 24 in the Northern Provinces, 

 of which 13 were under native administrations, and 33 in the 

 Southern Provinces, of which 6 are wholly and three partly under 

 the native administrations. In addition there is an extensive sys- 

 tem of native administration dispensaries, of which some 300 were 

 established by 1936, 121 in the Northern and 179 in the Southern 

 Provinces. The distribution of all these stations is shown in a map 

 (Nigeria 1936, D.R.). The sleeping sickness service, recently in- 

 augurated in the Northern Provinces, has a system of inspection and 

 treatment similar to that in French West Africa and the Cameroons 

 {see later) . The inspection service examines as large a proportion 

 of the population as possible, though, up to 1937, entirely on a 

 voluntary basis, and the treatment units which follow set up tem- 

 porary field dispensaries at which inoculations are given. A big 

 step forward in the control of sleeping sickness was made in January 

 1937 by the enactment of the Nigerian Sleeping Sickness Ordi- 

 nance (No. I of 1937). This applies to the Northern Provinces, 

 including those parts of the Cameroons administered with them, 

 and makes provision for the compulsory examination and treat- 

 ment of persons infected by the disease, and the proclamation of 

 sleeping sickness areas from time to time. In these areas special 

 measures must be taken by the occupiers of land, and the movement 

 of cattle, people, etc., is under definite control. 



