Statement of Australian Pacific Policy—And

Pacific Medical Services

IN developing the theme of “What can we do for our Fuzzy-Wuzzies,” some well-meaning but ill-informed commentators have urged that selected natives of New Guinea should be sent to the University of Sydney, for training at the School of Tropical Medicine, so that they may go back and undertake health and hygiene service among the native communities of Papua and the Man dated Territory.

As set out on paper, among people who know nothing of the Islands background, this appears admirable.

Actually, it is not only a ridiculous but also a dangerous policy. Em phatically, selected natives should be trained to give medical service—but not in that way.

The selected natives should be sent to the Native Medical School, estab lished many years ago, in Fiji, and now doing magnificent service; and a small but carefully-selected corps of young European medical officers should be trained at Sydney’s fine School of Tropical Medicine, so that they may direct and instruct the native medical practitioners who qualify in Suva.

ESTABLISHED about 1930 by Dr. S.

M. Lambert (American) and Dr.

Aubrey Montague (British), the Suva Medical School, through conscien tious trial and error, has created a system under which Polynesian, Melanesian, Indian and Micronesian natives, even although they come with only a poor knowledge of Eng lish, are trained in a four-years’

course to act as physicians and sur geons, in simple cases. The record of all graduates of the School is amaz ingly good; and some have carried on Guinea ** eir st, i di^ s ’ aftel ! , th e Suva gradua tion, and become highly qualified.

The Governments of Fiji, Western Samoa, Tonga, Cook Islands, American Samoa, Gilbert and Ellice Colony, New Hebrides, Solomons, Nauru and even

S. aan i (American) have supported

the School, and sent to it their selected native youths for training; ft* ““ benefit P eaCh lerrI err tory ' aS J be y° ul ?g natlve u m , edlca i titioners have gone back and got to work in the villages, has been marked, and is growing.

R Ut

° of Papua and ?ew i* um ® a ’ for f ome re ason unexplained and un bave held sternly aloof from the °} he \ Governments, and have had 2°u H u ck with the Suva Medical Sc hool. Finance could have had nothing to do with it; the cost of maintaining native lads at the Suva School is ridiculously low.

Papua did experiment with a plan of training Papuan lads at Sydney University for medical service in Papua; but it had two grave objec tions. Unless special provision is made for their guidance and guar dianship, it is not desirable to allow Islands natives, destined to live in Papua and care for primitive peoples there, to live long in a city like Sydney; and it is not easy to prepare, from University resources, a special tropical medical course for young

Islanders, no matter how interested the University people may be.

All who know the South Pacific Territories and are eager to see better native medical services in Papua and New Guinea, hope that, in the “new set-up,” Australia will support the Suva institution. fj'AR-REACHING preparations are afoot, against the day when Pacific Territories administration will be planned on a more comprehensive and unified basis than in the past; and the medical training of natives has a high priority in considerations relating thereto. Not only will the European Governments’ obligations to the natives be more clearly defined than hitherto, but it seems likely that their territorial responsibilities will be extended.

When Japan is defeated, it is possible that Japan’s control over the Caroline, Marshall* and Mariana archipelagoes will cease. Japanese rule there, since 1914, has been of no value to anyone but Japanese; the native peoples have been so harshly treated that their numbers are be lieved to be decreasing. If they are to be given the same status and help as the other Pacific peoples, they must be removed from the govern ment of the Japanese.

THE Native Medical School in Fiji will be extended and developed, so that native medical services can be expanded, as the need is felt and the call grows. Dr. V. W. T. McGusty, Fiji’s very capable director of medical services, has gone to London; and it is believed that somewhere abroad, in Whitehall or in the treasury of the Rockefeller Foundation (which al ready has endowed the Medical

School generously) additional funds will be made available, though him, for the School.

The same well-informed opinion believes that, while the Suva School will become the centre for the train ing of native medical practitioners for all the Pacific, the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine at the University of Sydney should become a centre of training, of a much higher standard, for all Euro pean medical officers intended for the Pacific services.

That certainly appears a sound conception—European medical of ficers, whose work will be directive and supervisory, to receive in Sydney

the benefits of the latest discoveries in medical science; the native medical practitioners, who will be the rank and file of the medical army destined to build up the Pacific races, to be

given a special training in Suva,

under favourable conditions, deve loped through two decades of prac tical experience. Here are those conditions: — Because the native students need Eng lish, to simplify their instruction and studies, and render easier their subsequent work as NMP’s, special provision is made to teach them English, as soon as they reach the School.

The students live together at the School, as one community. They are in charge of men who understand and like the native races, and respect their in stitutions. They are in no sense isolated; but their contacts with Suva life are so controlled that they are not likely to become spoiled or demoralised. They are carefully selected lads, and not of the type to become “flash” (“flash” natives being one of the horrors of the South Seas); but even they could easily be demoralised if allowed to run loose in a big European city.

They eat, dress and sleep in accordance with Pacific Islands customs. Their food is selected, cooked and served in such a way that there may be no dislocation be tween the mode of life which they have known and that which they will live in the future.

Natives from a dozen different Terri

tories, they are brought together, as one community, by men who know and understand them; and they are taught to appreciate each other’s viewpoint, and to unite in a pride in their race, in an eagerness to serve the Pacific peoples, and in a veneration of their School. No graduate of the finest College of Physicians on earth has greater pride in his Alma Mater than the native medical practitioner in % the fact that he is a qualified man from the Suva Medical School. In consequence, the conduct of these men, scattered throughout the Territories, is exemplary—an example and an inspiration to the native com munities with which they come so intimately in contact. This psychological factor is provided for carefully by the directors of the School; they regard the NMP’s as a most important cultural influence in the South Seas.

The students find, in the Suva War Memorial Hospital, most of the tropical diseases (except malaria) with which they will have to deal back home, and they are taught by men who have a definite background of (a) knowledge of the natives, (b) long experience of tropical medicine, IN this issue, we print in full the statement of policy made by the Australian Minister for External Af fairs, Dr. Evatt, in relation to the Pacific Territory. It is distinguished —as politicians’ utterances seldom are distinguished in these days—by wide vision, and statesmanlike capa city to phrase a thought. It is a framework within which much build ing has been done, and in which there is room for further constructive effort. Australia, on her past record, does not deserve any further Pacific responsibility; but Australia, on her present effort against the Asiatic invader, gains the right to a voice in the new set-up in the Pacific. From that point of view, Dr. Evatt’s speech is most valuable, because all future plans and discussions must be adjusted to his logical and compre hensive statement.

It is in that connection that new plans for an extended native medical service in the Pacific may be con sidered.