N. J. Mosquito Extermination Association 65 



malaria sick rate years. Where statistics have been gathered it 

 appears that the physician sees about one out of every five cases of 

 malaria. In one state malaria reported by physicians ranges from 

 100,000 to 150,000 cases per year with from 500 to 1,000 deaths. 

 The other cases are not recorded. I have been told in Ohio, as 

 well as in New Jersey, that you have no malaria problem. That 

 may be true, but you have a financial problem related to the states 

 in the malaria belt. When we have a high malaria rate in the 

 South we grow less and sell less, and we send smaller orders to 

 the manufacturing centers of New Jersey, Ohio and other states, 

 and less of our people come to your summer resorts to spend their 

 money. This annual loss of millions of dollars affects the bus- 

 ness interests, manufacturing interests and workmen of many of 

 our states, whether in the malaria belt or out of it. This is a 

 national problem. 



During the past few years large progress has been made by the 

 state health officers of the southern states. Some of them now 

 have small but continuous appropriations used for malaria con- 

 trol. The children in the public schools are being taught the 

 cause of malaria and the methods of prevention, and later will 

 support the energetic health officers in solving the local health 

 problems. 



In Alabama the state health department is establishing all- 

 time county health units. The full-time county health officer is 

 directing Anopheles control measures in the towns and villages of 

 his county, and as the farmers are taking up this work in rural 

 areas, the outlook is decidedlv favorable. 



In towns and villages in many of the southern states malaria 

 surveys are being made by the state health departments. Esti- 

 mates of cost for drainage and mosquito control maintenance are 

 made, and, when desired, the state health departments supervise 

 operations during the first year. They do so in order that the 

 work may be done correctly and economically, and also arrange 

 for its maintenance by the proper local officials in succeeding 

 years. During 1920 forty-five new communities undertook this 

 work at a cost of $155,000. During the war all the towns at 

 southern cantonments undertook malaria control work to protect 

 enlisted men from malaria, and most of them have continued it 

 since. We knew, when war was declared, that with the same 

 camp malaria infection as in the Spanish- American and Civil 

 Wars, we should have lost over 5,000^ enlisted men with malaria 

 fever. The southern towns subscribed funds to get work under 

 way at once and the results speak for themselves. There were 



5 MOS 



