^I^ SCIENCE IN AFRICA 



Training School controlled by the Mill Hill Catholic Mission. 

 Both have attached to them a large number of rural maternity 

 centres staffed by African girl midwives trained at the schools. 

 The course given covers two years' theoretical and practical train- 

 ing. A special course for the training of African sanitary inspectors 

 was begun at Mulago in 1936, and has attracted a very good type 

 of student. A course of training for African artisans in simple well 

 construction and the protection of water-supplies was inaugurated 



in 1935- 



In Nigeria, special courses are arranged for nurses, dispensers, 



and other subordinate African staff, as laid down in a special 

 publication (Nigeria 1930). For nurses, who can be trained at 

 several of the African general hospitals, the complete training takes 

 three years, before promotion as second-class nurses. To begin 

 with, a six-months' series of elementary lectures and demonstra- 

 tions is provided, after which most of the instruction is in the wards 

 and out-patient departments. For midwives the length of train- 

 ing is two and a half years, including the same six months' pre- 

 liminary course in general nursing. Infant welfare work is associ- 

 ated with that in midwifery. Dispensers are mostly trained at the 

 School of Pharmacy, Lagos, and a three-year course is followed 

 by the students, who are posted at a training hospital for a course 

 of account keeping, etc. Laboratory attendants similarly have a 

 three-years' course, with a fourth year, where possible. The train- 

 ing of sanitary inspectors has been especially developed in Nigeria, 

 and a centre at Ibadan was completed in 1932, largely through a 

 grant from the Colonial Development Fund. The course is two 

 years in length, and up to 1 936 some twenty-five Africans had been 

 through the school, which also serves as a demonstration centre of 

 hygienic mxCthods of living for the local community. 



In the Gold Coast a cadre of eighty nurse-dispensers for village 

 dispensaries is being established, through the special training 

 facilities at the Gold Coast Hospital. Midwives are trained at Accra 

 Maternity Hospital. Four nurse-dispensers complete their train- 

 ing every year, and it is hoped that, with the help of members of 

 the Gold Coast Red Cross, they will make possible the formation 

 of health units in all outlying areas, the nurse-dispenser giving 

 first aid and simple treatment^ the local teacher or catechist being 



