The Ministry of Health is the agency of the Government that takes charge of the initial response to the white blindness epidemic. After going blind, the doctor calls the Ministry of Health and alerts its leadership to the situation. Although the Ministry is skeptical of the doctor’s claims at first, it soon begins taking extreme but futile measures to try and contain the epidemic. Ultimately, it throws the doctor in quarantine along with all the other blind internees, completely abandoning him even despite his service to the public good. The minister chooses the mental hospital as a quarantine site because this is least likely to anger his powerful friends, and he then switches his focus to distracting and manipulating the public while the virus takes its course.