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Show I World Nations Battle Insects Wage Unceasing Fight To Safeguard Health NEW YORK. At New York harbor har-bor the other day a ship came in from the Mediterranean. Amid the tears and the laughter and the confetti there were a few wry faces and sore left arms. Those faces were wry and the arms sore because a couple of hours earlier, while the ship was still out at sea, a young doctor in the blues of the United States health service had boarded her and checked every passenger's typhoid immunization. i And those who didn't have the vaccine, got it right there before they came into the harbor, courtesy the United States government. Coming Com-ing down the gangplank then, they weren't feeling so hot. But 140 million mil-lion Americans were protected against the devastating death and damage of a typhoid epidemic. Radio Gave Report How did they know that day at the port of New York and, for that matter, 'at every port and airport in the United States that there was a need to watch out for typhoid from the Mediterranean area? They knew because early that morning doctors in every port and airport turned on their short wave radios at the required hour and heard a voice say, first in French and then in English, Russian and Spanish: "This is the intelligence service of the world health organization organi-zation calling all ports, airports and ships at sea. Three cases of the plague were reported this morning at Hong Kong; seven cases of cholera chol-era in Egypt, and typhoid in the Mediterranean area. . . ." The world health organization is one of the agencies of United Nations Na-tions and in its intelligence service every one of the UN members, and 11 non-member states, co-operate to carry on a unique kind of espionage, spying on bacilli. Started in 1946 The world health organization began be-gan to build its "epidemiological intelligence in-telligence service" that is the official offi-cial name in 1946. almost as soon as it was organized. Some of the functions were taken over from the League of Nations. Others were co-ordinated with existing regional operations, such as the work of the pan-American health institute in which the nations of the western hemisphere had been co-operating ter than a good mixture. Many against disease. |