SIR WALTER FOSTER (Derbyshire, Ilkeston)To ask the Secretary of State for War whether any steps are being taken to investigate the mode of infection in dum-dum and other allied parasitic fevers in India, with the view of preventing the heavy mortality and invaliding from these fevers among British soldiers in India, and so diminishing the annual draft now necessary.
(Answered by Mr. Secretary Arnold-Forster.) Steps are being taken to investigate the mode of infection in dumdum fever; but it will be some time before the investigation will be completed, and further evidence must be awaited before anything in the nature of special preventive measures can be intelligently formulated. Assuming that by "other allied parasitic fevers" malarial fevers are referred to, preventive measures have been adopted at military stations in India where such fevers are prevalent. It may be added that, as regards other fevers, a special Commission is investigating Malta fever, the occurrence of which in India is becoming more recognised, and a special Committee is investigating anti-typhoid inoculation.