THE SINGAPORE BUREAU.
As for the League's Bureau at Singapore, speakers from Asiatic countries testify year by year in the Assembly to the value of the service it is rendering to public health in that continent. The purpose of the Bureau is to receive bulletins as to health conditions in ports throughout the Far East over an area, indeed, stretching from the Pacific islands in the east to Alexandria in the west and including 187 ports altogether, and broadcast the information through the high-power station at Saigon in Indo-China, which is placed at the disposal of the League for this purpose by the French authorities. By this Means the sanitary authorities at any port to which an incoming vessel is approaching are
enabled to take such measures as may be necessary in the light of the health conditions at the port where the vessel last touched and where typhus or cholera or plague in one form or another may be prevalent.
The principle underlying the Health work of the Leagne is the organization of international co-operation. It has neither the money nor the staff to conduct campaigns itself, except in special emergencies such as the typhus epidemic in Eastern Europe in 1920, when the Health Organization, in addition to organizing a sanitary cordon on the Polish-Russian frontier, itself supplied hospitals and personnel on a con- siderable scale. Again in 1922, when Greek refugees were pouring by tens of thousands from Asia Minor into Europe, the Health Organization not only arranged for vaccination on a wholesale scale, but provided lymph and a certain number of doctors.
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