Prevalence of yaws on Kar Kar Island, New Guinea.

The International Biological Programme has as one of its objectives the study of man's adaptation to his environment. With this in view the Australian Government, the Australian Academy of Science, and the Royal Society of England combined in a multi-disciplinary study of the population of Kar Kar Island, New Guinea. The organization of the projects studied and the field work were under the direction of the Institute of Human Biology, Papua-New Guinea (Hornabrook, 1970). One of the projects undertaken was to determine the prevalence of yaws in the Kar Kar population. Kar Kar is a volcanic island which lies some 60 miles off the north coast of New Guinea immediately north-east of the town of Madang. It has a circumference of 60 miles and an area of 124 square miles. The population of approximately 17,000 is Melanesian and lives on the coastal slopes, the centre of the island being rugged, densely forested, and uninhabited. The economy is prosperous and depends on cocoa and coconut plantations. There is regular and frequent communication with Madang through pinnaces carrying copra to the mainland and an airstrip suitable for light aircraft. The island has been under the influence of several national groups-German, Australian, Japanese during the second world war, and finally Australian. Kar Kar is divided roughly in half by two language groups of equal size-the Waskia and the Takia. Each group has remained separate, there being little intermarriage between the two. Before the second world war, Kar Kar was described as the island of crooked men because of the severe deformities produced by infection with the yaws treponeme (Braun, 1968). After the war, yaws campaigns, first with arsenicals and later with penicillin, were carried out. Despite this, yaws still remained a problem. In the International Biological Programme only one large village, Kaul, was studied in great depth