Indian ffournal of Pediatrics
434
two full professors of paediatrics: today there are six professors and four associate professors. WHO assistance in strengthening national health services has continued and help at the health directorate level has been given in fields such as community development, nursing, environmental sanitation, setting up of epidemiological units and vital and health statistics. WHO health educators have assisted in strengthening health education bureaux in Afghanistan, Burma and Indonesia. In India a WHO health educator has been working at the Ministry of Health in co-operation with the Ministry of Education and an active health education section of the directorate was assisted in Bombay State. In medical education twelve internationally-recruited professors have been teaching in the various medical faculties. The School of Radiography in Ceylon, which is receiving WHO aid, will be used for training X-ray technicians from the Region. The WHO-assisted Mental Health Institute in Bangalore continues to be a valuable centre for training in psychological medicine and mental health nursing. Assistance was provided to the All-India Institute of Hygiene and Public Health in Calcutta to further improve its teaching courses. The Institute continues to be a training centre for students from India and neighbouring countries. During the year, 131 study fellowships were awarded to nationals of member countries. P h y t o n c i d e s - - N e w W e a p o n s i n M e d i c a l Arlnoury*
When we think of plant defences we think of thorns or stinging hairs. But plants have much more powerful weapons, substances we can not see, but which include some of the most powerful germ killers in existence. They are known as phytoncides. They have not yet been fully exploited in medical practice, partly because they are not very stable substances, and partly because few have yet been prepared in a pure form chemically. "'Imanin" is one of these phytoncides. It was isolated by a group of scientists at the Ukraine's Microbiology Institute. While not chemically pure, the brown powder they obtained has strong antibiotic properties. Onions and garlic, both well-known folk remedies in ancient Egypt and other countries, have been found to be very rich in phytoncides. It has been found that tkese plants, and many other plants and trees, secrete volatile substances which can kill various bacteria, fungi and even very tiny animals. So powerful are the phytoncides of garlic that they can kill tuberculosis bacilli in five minutes--compared with twenty-four hours taken by carbolic acid. * From USSR InformationServices.
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Onion phytoncides applied to war wounds which refused to heal killed nearly all the bacteria in the wound in a few minutes. A broken-offspray of bird-cherry, placed under a glass cover with water containing the tiny organisms known as infusoria, had killed them all in twenty minutes. Bird-cherry phytoncides will also kill flies, midges and other insects in a few minutes. T h e bacterial content of air in various types of forests has been tested. A pine grove had only a tenth of the quantity of bacteria found in a birch forest, and under younger pines no bacteria were found in the air. A woman scientist found that the use of fir needles in nurseries reduced the n u m b e r of streptococci in the room to only a tenth of their former number and could completely wipe out whooping cough germs. Other investigators have found that phytoncides can be used to combat virus diseases which have resisted all other forms &attack. It should be emphasised, however, that the work on phytoncides is still in an early stage and much more remains to be done before they can take their proper place in the medical armoury. T h e "burning bush" of the Caucasus, for instance, gives off phytoncides, which are poisonous to man; so does the sumach shrub and other plants. So it is necessary to find out which phytoncides are safe to use and how they can be fully isolated from other substances. Soviet scientists are now hard at work on these lines. TB : Successful mass treatment
at home may be possible*
Results of a carefully organized study in tuberculosis control in Madras point to the possibility of successful mass treatment of the disease without sending cases to hospital. This is a matter of world importance, since many countries have a shortage of tuberculosis beds. India, for example, is estimated to have more than 2,500,000 cases of activ,e tuberculosis and only 23,000 beds to serve t h e m - - r o u g h l y one bed for every 108 cases. Although the investigation was carried out among a comparatively small number of patients, it was made under conditions of control as nearly ideal as possible and by highly experienced research workers. T h e possibility of the successful application of the findhags on a national scale in the countries of South East Asia will depend on discovering how to apply this new knowledge to mass campaigns. T h e project was carried out by the Tuberculosis Chemotherapy Centre, Madras, under the joint auspices of the Indian Council of Medical Research, the Madras State Government, the World Health Organization and the British Medical Research Council. From among the many problems, it was decided, as a first step, to investigate the relative merits of twelve months of home and sanatorium * From WHO Press l?zleasa, September 16, 1959.
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