“If you have been living on roots and herbs for nine months and then are given a very insufficient daily dole of food, it may be assumed that you will not feel like reconstruction work immediately”, Mr. Kers Sund, of Norway, says in a report to the Nansen Relief Mission here. The effects of the Russian famine will not disappear altogether this year, no matter what the results of the harvest may be. The fight against rickets among the children has not even been begun, and should be begun at once.
“Many of those who have received rations from the Nansen Relief Mission are still very feeble and far from recovering their normal stats. Our hospitals are full of patients suffering from dysentery, typhoid, malaria and other diseases. There are many people suffering from swollen hands and feet from having eaten grass…
“The hospitals for children often lack the most necessary articles. There are almost no bedclothes. I have seen sick children with only bare planks to lie on, and where there is any thing to serve as a mattress, it is frequently merely bits of cloth sewn together covering bare planks.
Cases of dysentery and typhus are placed side by side, for lack of room. There are neither glasses nor cups, and empty condensed milk cans serve as drinking glasses, while flour sacks are used for bedding.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
