The educational screen (c1922-c1956])

Page 286 The Educational Screen Walt Disney during his recent trip to Latin America, gathering material for films to be used in the good neighbor program. quality for exhibition before dental societies and schools. During the past year more than 2.800 programs of health and medical films have been seen by over 1,000,000 persons throughout South America. The films have been shown in public squares and before municipal police, soldiers, sailors, government work- ers, hospital patients, nurses' schools, teachers' schools and in public schools and theatres. Other audiences have been high school and university students, govern- ment cabinet officers, members of beneficent societies, athletic clubs, prisoners, members of local Rotary Clubs and other civic organizations. More than one hundred mobile film units in sound film trucks owned by com- mercial firms have brought our modern medicine show to hitherto unreached Latin American by-ways. It is a fair question for a taxpayer of the United States to ask, "Why .should we worry about the health of people in South America? Our Own national health could stand plenty of improvement. I don't see why my taxes should pay for movies in Spanish and Port- ugese on subjects like cancer and syphilis and I cer- tainly don't understand why such things are part of our war effort. Seems pretty far fetched to me." The fellow who pays the bills has a right to know why our health films activity is not merely an esoteric form of wartime boon-doggling and why a film on malaria shown in Brazil is important to us in the United States. In sharing our tools of knowledge and in joining other American Health Ministries in the fight on our common health problems, we are not only helping our neighbors to help themselves; we are also helping our- selves in a justifiably selfish way. The other Americas are producing war materials vital to the United Nations war effort all over the world. Their production of tin and other minerals, rubber, quartz crystal, industrial diamonds, foods such as coffee and bananas, and essential life saving medi- cines such as quinine, bismuth and iodine, provide the weapons and the sustenance for our armies and save the lives of countless casualties. Production of these resources depends largely on the health of Latin American workers. They labor in areas and under conditions which reduce their out- put because of the ravages of dysentery, malaria, typhoid and other devitalizing diseases. Many areas cannot be maintained for productive use unless sani- tation education gives the inhabitants knowledge of the methods for overcoming these health menaces. Hence, the health of our southern neighbors is a powerful weapon in our own behalf. However, Latin America is not a disease-ridden nightmare. Its doctors and .scientists have much to teach us. We have no right to be patronizing in our health films. We are merely providing the means by which our neighbors can fight their battles for their <(wn sake and with benefit to us. In health and medical films we are translating the nebulous term '"good will" into very practical benefits. A healthy country is usually a strong country. For strategic reasons the other American republics are important to our security. Unlike the Axis, we do not try to make our neighbors weak satellite nations; we seek to make them strong. By helping them, '■good will' results, without flattery and without inti- midation. By helping to make strong neighbors who are naturally friendly, we provide an eloquent ex- ample of democratic cooperation. In a recent poll of industrial groups in Buenos Aires, films on scientific and health subjects were voted the most popular non- theatrical films of all those sponsored by the Coordina- tor's Office. The effect is not lost on our realistic southern neighbors, when it is contrasted with the fear and intimidation by which Axis films seek to sell Nazism. That is why the malaria film "Winged Scourge," produced for us by Walt Disney with the aid of the Seven Dwarfs, is helping us win the propa- ganda war in South America against German films like Victory In The West. Perhaps one of the greatest justifications for spend- ing the United States taxpayer's money on Latin American health films results in the protection from disease which we afford John Q. Public, U.S.A. When this war is over, our armies will return with the ac- claim attending victory, and as they scatter to every town and village in the United States, they may carry the scourge of malaria—a di.sease which may become the greatest epidemic scourge in our history. Disease is the world's greatest traveller. The fallacy of our thinking regarding tropical diseases, is that very many of them just are not tropical. Malaria is one of the greatest killers known to men. It is estimated that more than 3,000,000 people a year die of it. Many times that number are victims who live to drag out their lives .subject to the incajmcitating torture of recurrent chills and fever. This disease can be carried through the United States. Thousands of persons die or are disabled by it yearly in our southern .states, and epidemic outbreaks have occurred in California, Connecticut and Iowa in years past. Dr. Marshall Barber, a great malaria authority, has said, "There is no doubt that this invasion of gambiae threatens the Americans with a catastrophe in com- parison with which ordinary pestilence, conflagration,