Yellow Press And

Malaita.

Distorted Interview About Health of the Solomon Islanders.

WHEN L. M. Maybury, of the Mela nesian Mission arrived in Brisbane by the “Mataram” on February 6, the representative of certain Australian newspapers, apparently seeking a blood curdling “cannibal” story, interviewed him.

Their subsequent accounts of Malaita, where Dr. Maybury has been stationed, would convince readers who knew no thing of Solomons conditions, that the island was inhabited by a race of lepers whose only chance of not being killed by the disease was to die first of malaria.

Headed “Disease-ridden Island,” one paper’s “story” begins: “Sixty thousand natives, leprosy and tuberculosis rife, and not a single doctor! That is the plight of the Island of Fauaba, in the Solomons, where a hospital is being con ducted by two sisters and native boys.”

Dr. Maybury obviously did not suspect that his remarks would be so distorted.

Anybody who knows the Group knows that while the Government has some what retrenched its medical service it would not withdraw from an island with 40,000 inhabitants (not 60,000 as stated) all medical services unless it was well aware that this was being provided in some other way.

Another journal says that “malaria and yaws are among the other com plaints rampant on the island and Dr.

Maybury ... expressed the hope that another medical man would be found.”

At Auki, the Government Station on Malaita, is a District Officer, part of whose duty is to keep an eye on the health of natives, A few hours’ distant from Malaita is Tulagi, where there is a modern hospital for Europeans and na tives, staffed by two medical men helped by European nurses. Not long ago a medical expedition spent much time and effort on Malaita in an anti-yaws cam paign.

Besides these, there is the head quarters of the Malaita Company at Su’u at which medical men and women are frequent visitors. So it is fairly safe to assert that the health of the natives of Malaita is as good as that of those in any other island of the Group. If there is actually a larger number of natives there requiring medical attention, it is