The health of the industrial worker in Iraq.

In Iraq an industrial revolution is in full swing and is advancing more quickly than is fully appreciated. Most Iraqi industrialists have learned from the lessons of history and are not committing all the blunders made by the industrialists of the nineteenth century in Europe. The biggest and most important industry in Iraq is undoubtedly agriculture, and great efforts are now being made to mechanize and to introduce modern methods of irrigation and fertilization. In England agriculture is one of the healthiest occupations but in Iraq it is the reverse. Iraq is divisible into a number of distinct areas according to the nature of the land, and consequently the crops grown in each zone vary so that the health hazards differ likewise, but it is not exaggerating to state that the average agricultural worker (fellah) is a living pathological specimen as he is probably a victim of ankylostomiasis, ascariasis, malaria, bilharzia, trachoma, bejel, and possibly of tuberculosis also. If the various development schemes are allowed to proceed without the advice and wholehearted support and help of the public health specialists and sanitary engineers, such diseases as manmade malaria and bilharzia will spread to areas hitherto free, just as in Egypt. At the present moment the Iraqi Government Principal Bureau of Statistics is undertaking an industrial survey, and though the results are not available yet, some information can be given. There are approximately 150 firms which employ 50 or more workers, of which the Iraq Petroleum Company is the biggest employer with