World War I manpower demands made African preventive medicine a colonial priority

Evidence

Dakar, however, had not needed Paris to point the way. The reorganization of the AMI in 1912 had recommended that medical personnel tour their districts regularly for the same reasons. During the war, the demands for African manpower made prevention of the endemic and epidemic diseases and the fight against infant mortality among Africans a new priority of the Government General. At the same time, a drastic drop in the number of doctors in the federation-from around 100 in 1912 to 67 in 1921-also put health care back on the agenda. … The ideal originally formulated by Roume of combining “hygiene and medical assistance” for Africans, Merlin noted, was impossible at the moment; the “least urgent” therefore had to be sacrificed to strategies for “conserving the race.” — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 773

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader argument in this book about how republican France rationalized its ‘civilizing mission’ in West Africa — here wartime manpower needs, not humanitarian ideals, drove medical expansion.