Doctors Plan Mississippi Med. Center

The Medical Committee for Human Rights plans to establish local health centers throughout Mississippi, Dr. Jack Geiger, assistant professor of Public Health and director of the MCHR, disclosed last night.

The MCHR was established last summer after the Council of Federated Organizations appealed to Northern doctors for emergency medical help. About 75 faculty members and students at the Harvard Medical School are active members of the group, and many of them are expected to go to Mississippi this summer.

Geiger said that MCHR-trained public health nurses working under local Negro physicians will staff the center. Negro health associations will be organized to support the centers and continue their work after the Northerners go home.

The group hopes to open the first of the centers this spring in Holmes Country, in the north central part of the state. He said a MCHR nurse has been there for two months planning the pilot program.

Speaking at the Med School's Vanderbilt Hall in Boston, Geiger proposed that "medicine and medical care be used as an instrument of social change."

Geiger said that medical care for Negroes in Mississippi is completely inadequate. He noted that:

There are 1411 white physicians in Mississippi, but only 59 Negro doctors.

There are only about a score of charity hospital beds available for northern Mississippi's 450,000 Negroes.

Over 99 per cent of white Mississippi babies are born in hospitals while 45 per cent of Negro babies are delivered by midwives who have had no real training.

Geiger described a midwives "training meeting: "First, there was inspection of bags, during which such unsuitable tools as nail files were removed. Then the "midwives' song" was sung to the tune of "This is the Way We Brush Our Teeth.