CHAPTER XVII 

 HEALTH AND POPULATION 



INTRODUCTION 



THE first section of this chapter is devoted to a sketch of some of the 

 work in collecting vital records which gives a real foundation 

 for knowledge of the state of health of the population. This leads 

 on to a discussion of ways in which health may be improved in 

 the rural areas as opposed to the towns, where in most cases 

 adequate hospitals exist. Finally considerable space is devoted 

 to the food and nutrition of Africans in view of the increasing 

 interest in the probability that malnutrition may be a cause of 

 widespread ill-health. 



VITAL STATISTICS AND DEMOGRAPHY 



It is perhaps unnecessary to emphasize the extreme importance 

 of demographic data. P. G. Edge (1932) compares the collection 

 and accurate recording of vital statistics with commercial book- 

 keeping, without which no enterprise can hope to succeed. The 

 same author (1932 and 1937), and every one else who has been 

 connected with the collection of demographic data from African 

 populations, stress the difficulty attached to such work among 

 people who do not yet understand and may still be prejudiced 

 against the methods of the white man. 



Chapter IV of An African Survey has outlined and discussed 

 the existing agencies for collecting population records in Africa, 

 and Dr. Kuczynski (1936) has considered these from the point of 

 view of population trends, so it is only necessary here to summarize 

 such data as bear directly on medicine and health. These data 

 consist firstly of general censuses of the population which have 



