N.M.P.’s Help to Save Native Races

Good Work In New Hebrides

THE Native Medical Practitioner is a new departure in the New Hebrides, and marks an important milestone in the progress and development of the na tive race.

After completing his three years’ course of study in the Fiji medical school, Daniel Kalorib, the first N.M.P. from the New Hebrides, is busy at work in the Paton Memorial Hospital, Vila.

Clad in his smart dispensary outfit, and surrounded by a queue of waiting pati ents, he looks in his natural element, dealing with the suffering humanity of his own race.

The N.M.P., graduating to-day from the Fiji school of medicine, knows far more about tropical diseases than the foreign doctors who, in the early days of European settlement, came to the islands

from London or Edinburgh schools. Dur ing the past quarter of a century, tropi caL .medicine has worked almost magical achievements and, in spite of limited re sources, the Islands Hospitals have pass ed. on to the natives the benefits of scientific research.

In the pioneering days, doctors had to depend on few tools, and a comparatively small equipment of medicines. Their first operations were performed in primi tive surroundings and their instruments sterilised in homely saucepans. Those pioneers had to depend upon such cas ual help as they could obtain to admin ister the anaesthetic, and it was al ways necessary for the surgeon to keep one eye on the operation and the other on the anaesthetist. To the unsophisti cated natives of a past generation anaesthetics were a source of perennial wonder, while the spectacular results of, surgery made a more realistic impression upon them than on the blase descend ants of to-day.

Within recent years, anew and prom ising field has been opened for Native Practitioners in administering intravenous inoculations against the island disease of Yaws, a scourge which was pretty well universal among the natives, and was slowly undermining the virility of the race.

This branch of medical service, which in other lands belongs to the Department of Public Health, has hitherto been re garded as an essential part of a mission ary’s province; but, with the advent of the NJVLP.’s there will be delegated to them an ever-increasing share of the medical treatment which scientific re search has found to be indispensable in stemming the tide of depopulation and promoting the welfare of the native race.

It is singularly appropriate that the na tives, themselves, should have a share in the stirring drama of racial recovery, by joining forces with the volunteers from overseas, who are striving to reach the remote outposts of every island with the remedial measures upon which the conservation of the native race depends.

Unstinted approbation must be given the Rockefeller Health Board for the yeoman service it rendered the New Heb rides native race by conducting an is land-wide campaign against the twin scourges of Yaws and Hookworm. Their representative, W. J. Tufty, who won universal esteem, spent 2i years in the Group, going from island to island, treat ing all natives who came to him and giving them free Injections. The re sults, following the injections, were as spectacular as they were efficacious, and completely broke down the old hostility and prejudice of the natives against the white man’s medicine.

When Mr. Tully was engaged on the island of Paama, a lad, 16 years of age, was carried on a stretcher from a dis tant village and laid on the ground be side the dispensary table. The Yaws virus had eaten into the bones and, for two years, Apok had quite lost the use of his limbs. Disregarding a long queue of patients, Mr. Tully administered an anti-Yaws inoculation and then, turn ing to the stretcher-bearers, requested them to bring Apok back in a week’s time for a second injection.

So great was the improvement that* with the aid of crutches, Apok hobbled

along on his own legs for the second in jection, and was told to come back in a weeks time for a third. Smiling and happy, and feeling quite chirpy, Apok appeared for his third injection without the crutches. With a twinkle in his eye Mr. Tully advised him to have still an other inoculation before he started to play football. Sure enough, in a few weeks time, Apok was on the football field.

It was not surprising that, with such cures to his credit, pretty well the whole population came forward for injections of what they called “the wonder medi cine”. Natives themselves now #recognise that it is one thing which will stem the tide of depopulation and give the New Hebrides a new lease of life.

Most welcome are the signs of recu perative power that are already manifest on islands that for many years have been threatened with the spectre of depopu lation. A new spirit of hopefulness is abroad.

For more than a century, the shuttle of European impact has been driven backwards and forwards across the face of the islands and broken down the an cestral life of the people. The natives were face to face with forces they could neither resist nor understand. With un known diseases depopulating the islands, and the ancestral mode of life crumbling before their eyes, the elders of the peo ple were stricken with the most hopeless

of maladies—despair.

But signs are not wanting that they are regaining faith in themselves. A struggle is in progress to preserve the soul of the people. Security is replac ing fear. A new islander is already on the arena; not really a new man, but one compounded of new growth and age-long

ideas.-

M.F.