An Arabic public-health poster from Jordan, 1957, issued by the Jordanian Ministry of Health with the American Operations Mission in Jordan and filed with U.S. Information Agency posters. Four insects in circles, a flea, a louse, a mosquito and a fly, sit beside a red call to destroy the carriers of disease (NAID 6948737).
What the sheet prints
Four circles, each with one enlarged insect and an arrow, and a column of large red Arabic words. The insects are a flea, a louse, a mosquito and a housefly. The foot of the sheet names who stands behind it, in three lines.
أهلكوا ناقلات المرض من الحشرات
المملكة الأردنية الهاشمية – وزارة الصحة
الخدمة الفنية للصحة والنظافة
بعثة العمل الاميركية في الأردن – ١٩٥٧
[Translation] Destroy the carriers of disease among the insects. / Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan - Ministry of Health / Technical Service for Health and Sanitation / American Operations Mission in Jordan - 1957
Who issued it
Unusually for this group of sheets, both governments are on the face. The Jordanian Ministry of Health comes first, then a technical health and sanitation service, then the American Operations Mission in Jordan, with the year. The National Archives files it in Record Group 306 with the U.S. Information Agency's posters for Asia, Latin America and the Middle East, catalog date 19 February 1957. FRAME classes the source as open.
How to read it
FRAME tags it fear appeal: four pests are named as dangers and the viewer is told to kill them, with no further explanation. That is a fair description and a mild one. The sheet carries no political message at all. Its whole content is a household instruction.
Public-health posters are the easiest government speech to defend when they are honest about their source and ask for something the reader is free to do or not. This one meets both tests. It names its issuers, and it asks people to kill disease-carrying insects. What it does not do is explain how, which limits its use more than its honesty. A related 1955 cartoon on vaccine distribution shows the other side of public health, the argument over who decides. The archive's Ceylon milk poster of the same year is another aid sheet that names its giver.
Sources
- FRAME object record, Destroy the Insects That Carry Disease (Arabic poster distributed in Amman). Catalog date February 19, 1957.
- U.S. National Archives, Record Group 306, Propaganda Posters Distributed in Asia, Latin America and the Middle East, item NAID 6948737, 306-PPB-10, catalog.archives.gov. Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. government work).
