Annual medical and health report / Nigeria.

  • Nigeria. Medical Department.
Date:
[1934]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Annual medical and health report / Nigeria. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    14/116 (page 6)
    II.—PUBLIC HEALTH. A.—GENERAL REMARKS. The year 1934 opened with no improvement of the financial position and it was again necessary to exercise economy in all branches of medical work. Vacancies in European personnel were not filled, except in a few instances, and the cadre is now considerably reduced. Economies effected during the financial year 1933-34 reduced the estimated expenditure of £432,756 to an actual expenditure of £391,339. For the financial year 1934-35 an estimated expenditure of £401,711 was approved, which sum is £84,229 less than the actual expenditure in 1930-31. The staff of Medical Officers engaged upon purely clinical work will experience some relief when the Medical Assistants who are being trained at the Medical School at Lagos qualify for duty. Six Medical Assistants qualified in January, 1935, and have been posted to the larger hospitals as house surgeons. They will take their diploma examination in three years time and, if successful, will then be appointed as Assistant Medical Officers. A report upon the Medical School and Schools of Pharmacy appears in Appendix C. The following table shows how general hospital work steadily increases, notwithstanding reduction of staff :— Total cases treated. 1931. 1932. 1933. 1934. Europeans:— In-patients Out-patients Total Europeans . Africans and other Non- Europeans :— In-patients Out-patients Total Africans 1,245 7,(530 1,010 5,912 1,030 6,058 1,065 6,968 8,875 6,922 7,088 8,033 35,738 481,750 41,577 541,517 45,233 570,607 47,947 594,555 517,497 583,094 615,840 642,502 The above figures do not include patients who received treatment at the dispensaries established by the native administrations During 1934, 628,065 patients were treated at 231 dispensaries, as compared with 619,188 patients at 226 dispensaries in 1933 and 367,882 patients at 197 dispensaries in 1932. 1.-GENERAL DISEASES. A return of diseases and deaths for 1934 is given in Tables IV and V on pages 43 to 62 of this report. The incidence of disease groups is shown in diagramatic form overleaf. Attention was drawn in the last Annual Report to the prevalence of neurasthenia amongst European residents in Nigeria. The condition was diagnosed in 104 cases during 1934 and was shown as the cause of invaliding in 20% of all European officers who were invalided. Attention is becoming more and more focussed upon dietetic deficiencies of native foodstuffs, the effects of which appear particularly in school children. It is possible that there is a toxic element in addition to the deficiency element in some diets, especially in the case of cassava and the coco yam. Dr. Fitzgerald Moore drew attention, in an article published in the West African Medical Journal, to the toxic effect of stale or badly prepared cassava, and Dr. A. Clark is working in Nigeria upon the tox-albumen (tannia) of the coco yam. 1 he latter investigation is being financed by a grant made from the Medical Research Council and the Colonial Medical Fund. Work has been continued during the year at the dietetic laboratory upon the values of native foods. The laboratory was moved from Katsina to a more spacious laboratory at Zaria.