DEVELOPMENT OF CONTROL MEASURES 63 



It will easily be seen that, where the infection is at all 

 considerable, the annual loss to a community from malaria may 

 reach a very high figure. Take Roanoke Rapids for example. 

 It is asserted that during the malaria season, 75 per cent of the 

 population of 4,100, or 3,075 persons suffered from malaria. To 

 be conservative, let us say that only 25 per cent, or 1,025 suffered 

 from it. Again, instead of putting the loss resulting from each 

 case at $20, let us put it at $10. The annual loss, then, was 

 $10,250, nearly three times what the first year's cost of eliminat- 

 ing malaria was. 



Take Crossett. Before work started, the malaria calls of 

 physicians totalled 2,502 in a single year; the year that work 

 started the calls totalled 741; the difference is 1,761 calls. 

 Assuming the physicians made two calls to a case, the reduction 

 effected by the anti-mosquito work was 880 cases. At $15 a 

 case, the monetary value of the work was $13,200. Yet the 

 actual cost of the work for that year was only $2,506.40. 



Similar conclusions may be drawn from the facts given in the 

 accounts of the other demonstrations. And, as a rule, the costs 

 of the work are considerably less after the first year. 



While local conditions are, of course, the determining factor 

 in regard to costs of anti-mosquito campaigns, it is believed that, 

 in the average town, the first year's cost should not, as a rule, 

 much exceed $1 per capita. If this be true, it is clear that it 

 will pay the community, on a dollar-and-cent basis alone, to 

 initiate anti-mosquito work if only one person out of every 15 or 

 20 be infected during the season. This, of course, does not take 

 into consideration such aspects of the matter as comfort, up- 

 building the health of the community, etc. 



SOME TYPICAL CAMPAIGN COSTS 



The following table gives the cost of anti-mosquito campaigns 

 conducted in towns that co-operated in the 1920 joint demonstra- 

 tion by the U. S. Public Health Service, the International Health 

 Board and the Health Departments of the States in which they 

 are situated: 1 



1 Southern Medical Journal, April, 1921. 



