Page 401 - Bahrain Gov Annual Reports (IV)_Neat

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Two main hospitals for men and women.
Two small maternity hospitals in Muharraq and Hidd.
Two isolation blocks for men and women.
A T.B. Block.
A Mental Asylum.
A Public Health branch to cover —
(a) Quarantine and Port Health.
(b) Anti-Malaria.
(c) Boys’ Schools.
(d) Control of markets, food and drink vendors and town sanitation.
Eleven dispensaries for men and women for Muharraq, Police, and eight outlying
villages.
The greater part of this work has been developed over fourteen years. Great efforts are
now in hand not only to expand the base hospitals, but to develop preventative health to such
an extent that certain forms of disease will not have to come up for hospital treatment. There
is no doubt this should be the prior policy and not so much the lavish expenditure on buildings
and the wholesale handing out of expensive drugs. People should have health ideas inculcated
into them from the villages and children upwards, and such things as general cleanliness, care
of eyes and extermination of flies and mosquitos are of premier importance.

More time and visits arc being paid to villages where eight regular clinics are being main­
tained. Our efforts are meagre but helpful, and will have an effect in time, more particularly
if a few leading villagers can be made to sec the value of helping themselves over quite simple
hygiene measures. Fortunately most villagers have easy access to the towns for more specialised
treatment, but the general standard of health and infant mortality is poor.

There is a resident Indian doctor appointed to His Highness Shaikh Sulman, who lives
at Rafaa to look after his people and holds a daily clinic. He combines this with visiting three
villages twice a week in rota, Sitra, Aali, and Karzakan, and carrying out vaccinations.

The two main schemes for the near future are the building of a new Women’s Hospital
in Manama on a larger scale and especially to cope with the overload of maternity work. The
Men’s Hospital will then take over the present Women’s block which will satisfy their needs
for expansion.
The other plan is for T.B. control and is being planned on an ideal laid down by the head
of the T.B. Section of the World Health Organisation in Geneva, Dr. J. Holm, who visited
Bahrain for this purpose at the end of the year. It consists of a centre of operations on the
outskirts of the town with a laboratory, X-Ray room and statistics office. A small hospital
for infectious cases beginning at 50 beds adjoining this, and a team to examine and inoculate i
every individual in the Island over a period of nine to twelve months. Mass miniature X-Ray
examinations may also be considered.
The purpose of this is to knock out T.B. at its source, to secure information as to where it is
most prevalent and what age groups, to find out early cases which can be arrested either at home
or in Miraj, India, and to segregate the heavily infectious cases in the base hospital. The whole
procedure would have to be carried out with precision and accuracy helped at first by European
experts chosen by Geneva, after which an indigenous team should be capable of maintaining it.
This is a highly expensive project never before enacted in full by a small Eastern country.
Bahrain lends itself as an organised island easy to make this possible, and apart from T.B., much
valuable information on the health of the community will be gained. This is a fully compre­
hensive scheme which is still in process of being worked out with Geneva. It should be men­
tioned that a large source of this infection is brought in by foreigners, and more especially
Persians and Saudi Arabians, and the problem of returning them without being unkind is a
difficult one.