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Problem of Indian Administration
  1. and remedied at an early age before the child is sent to school. Recommendations regarding the care of boarding school children are contained in the section of this chapter dealing with that special subject.[1] The local Indian medical service should make complete and careful examinations of all Indian children attending public schools or Indian Service day schools and should arrange for the care and treatment of all found in need of attention. Local officers should give special attention to the sanitation and hygiene of local schools for Indians. This service should be extended to Indian children in public schools unless the public school authorities are found to be making adequate provision.
  2. The routine practice of the reservation public health organiza- tion should include vaccination against small pox, immunization of preschool children and school children against diphtheria, the prompt reporting and isolation of cases of communicable disease, and as far as possible general testing for the discovery of venereal diseases, as is now being done at the Consolidated Chippewa Agency. Provision should be made for treatment of cases of venereal diseases thus located.
  3. The local health organization should also give special attention to water supply and sewage disposal. In many Indian village com- munities regular water and sewer systems are practicable and the program should look to their ultimate development. Tribal funds or reimbursable funds might well be used in such a program. Where the installation of such systems is impracticable a privy campaign, such as has been successful in many white communities, should be inaugurated. Working models of acceptable simple plans for these buildings should be available on every reservation, and Indians should be aided in building sanitary privies on their own places.

    Further steps should be taken toward providing a safe water supply. This matter is discussed under hospitals, sanatoria, and schools so that here reference is made particularly to water supplies on the reservations. The use of tribal well-boring machines is suggested. Arrangements can be made for having water tested periodically by the laboratories of state health departments or by the Public Health Service.

  1. ↑ See pages 302 to 306.
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