Health Report

Surgeon General Thomas Parran last week made his annual report to Congress on the state of the nation's health, which the U.S. Public Health Service during the last year spent $115,000,000 trying to better. Some particulars:

P: U.S. health is just about as bad as it was 25 years ago. In 1918, 34% of men examined were found unfit for military service. Now about 40% are rejected.

P: The mortality rate for 1943 (not including war casualties) was 10.9 per thousand compared with 10.4 for the previous year. The 21.9 birth rate was the highest since 1924, and the number of babies born was "the highest ever recorded."

P: "The large increase in syphilis, traditionally accompanying war, failed to materialize." U.S.P.H.S. spent $13,000,000 to prevent it.

P: One case of smallpox was flown into Miami--"the first recorded case of a quarantinable disease crossing an international frontier by air." To check up on passengers coming into Miami, Public Health Service officers are now on hand at the airport 24 hours a day. During the year, the Service inspected 14,954 ships, 461,502 passengers and 901,954 seamen to keep disease out of the U.S.

P: Some of the Service's malaria research was so sensational that findings "cannot be reported until the war's end."

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