Malaria, a disease once unknown in Shanghai has shown a "well marked increase" according to the report of the Commissioner of Public Health for September. In his reference to this disease in his monthly report, the Commissioner points out there were nearly twice the number of cases reported last month as there were in the same month of last year in spite of the concentration of the efforts of malarial squads on anopheline breeding grounds. Continuing, he points to an important factor in the development of Shanghai as a cause for this increase. He states:
It is probable that the lack of cultivation and the increase of waste land have encouraged mosquito breeding in areas surrounding the treated area, factors which can only be eliminated in the course of time through the progress of roads and the levelling of land which accompanies town development.
Coincidental with the report of the Commissioner comes the report from Hongkong that American aid had been requested to fight the problem of malaria in the south-western provinces of China, especially in Yunnan. Dr. Robert E. Brown, adviser to the Chinese National Health Administration, has arrived in Hongkong with alarming reports of the ravages of malaria among the labourers employed on the Burma-Yunnan Highway. Dr. Brown stated ihat malaria had accounted for a third of the labourers employed on the highway and was so severe as to threaten to the continued operation of the road, which occupies so important a part in China's communications system through the "western backdoor." In Shanghai, with the efficient health services at the disposal of the foreign authorities, it is possible to check and control the outbreak once the conditions are known, but in other parts of China, where these preventive services do not operate so efficiently and so extensively, the problem becomes extremely difficult. Throughout history many huge labour projects have been wrecked or hampered by disease, and not the least significant of these diseases has been malaria,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.