Negro Health

The biggest health boost of any group in the U.S. population has been enjoyed in recent years by Negroes--and it still leaves Negroes far worse off than whites. That was the conclusion which could be read between the lines of a report made last week by the Julius Rosenwald Fund, which in 15 years has spent $1,600,000 on Negro health.

>There are now no Negro hospitals in the U.S., 25 of them registered,* 13 approved for full intern training. Fifteen years ago there were almost none. But the Rosenwald Fund's report states there are still only 10,000 hospital beds for Negroes in the country (Negro pop. 13,000,000), and in some areas where the population is heavily Negro there are as few as 75 beds set aside for a million Negroes. This stands against the U.S. average of ten beds per 1,000 population. (In answer to an American Medical Association questionnaire in 1940, 4,230 of 6,300 U.S. hospitals replied that they will accept Negro patients and 1,577 said they would not.)

When the Fund's work began, there were only 29 Negro public health nurses in the South. Now there are 341. The Fund has helped place Negro physicians as health officers in the health departments of North Carolina, Texas, Louisiana, Illinois, Alabama, New Jersey, in six city health departments, in the federal Children's Bureau and the U.S. Public Health Service.

Since 1920, the Negro tuberculosis death rate has dropped from 235 per 100,000 to an estimated 129.

>The Fund demonstrated in a ten-year campaign in Macon County, Ga. that syphilis among Negroes can be controlled in a relatively short time. The Negro rate dropped from 40% to 10%.

>Though training facilities have improved, there are now only 4,000 Negro physicians--a slight improvement over 1928 when there was one colored physician to every 3,125 Negroes. The same year there was one physician to every 805 of the general population. (Most Negroes go to white physicians.)

>In 1924, the Negro death rate was 17.6 per thousand, compared with 11.8 for the rest of the population. The death rate is now 14 per thousand, still 32% above that of the U.S. as a whole.

The Fund's conclusion: Negroes' health needs "cannot be met by the Fund or by any voluntary organization. . . . Further progress must rest with the public."

*Listed by the American Medical Association.

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