Publicity for Suva

Medical School Oversea Journals Are Interested

T I HE Central Medical School, Suva, 1 has been receiving some well merited publicity abroad since the British Colonial Office —through the Suva set-up—launched its big £600,000

plan for Central Pacific medical ser

vices. The American magazine “Time” and the “British Medical Journal” have both published articles on the

subject.

This is what “Time” says : MANY of the students are only a few generations removed from canni balism. They are Fijians, Samoans, natives of the Solomons, Cook, New Hebrides, Tonga, Gilbert and Ellice Islands, and a few East Indians.

Only requirement for the Central Medical School, at Suva, in the Fiji Islands, is the equivalent of a good United States high school education.

Students are given four years of anatomy and surgery. The Suva degree is NMP— Native Medical Practitioner. With it goes a Government salary and the right to practise within the Western Pacific Islands. But the NMP’s chief job is to care for their own people. Native dis eases are bad: yaws, malaria and black water fever, filariasis. The imported diseases are often worse.

The NMP’s vaccinate, fight mosquitoes, teach latrine building, operate for ele phantiasis, give quinine, deliver babies.

The slow increase of native populations on most Western Pacific Islands is largely due to their efforts.

The Suva Medical School began back in the 1880’s with verbal instruction (no text-books, no laboratories) by the British Medical Office at Fiji. For the first 40 years it was only a makeshift. In 1928, bulky, energetic Dr. Sylvester Max well Lambert, who spent 20 years in the South Pacific for the Rockefeller Foun dation, persuaded the Foundation to help.

In 1929, the Suva School dedicated a new dormitory and mess hall. Enrolment was increased from 16 to 40, extended to in clude non-Fijians. In the 1930’5, patho logical and bacteriological laboratories were added. In 1940 a European nurse started a nurses’ school. Since Dr. Lam bert’s retirement, in 1939, Dr. Victor William Tighe McGusty, Director of Fiji s Medical Services, has had complete charge of the school. Rockefeller support, no longer needed, has been withdrawn. The regular teachers are British-paid Colonial Medical Service doctors In April came news that: (1) the Cen tral Medical School has increased its students to 76, including eight dental students; (2) there are 100 native nurses in training; (3) the Fijian Government now proposes an overall health plan lor all the islands, with a base hospital at Suva, served by air ambulances from the other islands.

From the “British Medical Journal ” of February 12: A RECENT visitor to this country has been Dr. V. W. T. McGusty, Director of Medical Services, Fiji, who spoke at a London conference on developments in the training of native doctors and nurses for work in the Pacific area. Dr McGusty, who went out to 191 A is the head of the Central Medical and Nursing Schools at Suva, which were visited by some members of the bma during the world tour eight years ago.

To appreciate the work done by tne school, it is necessary to bear in mind

the historical background. When Fiji was opened up to white traders and settlers, infectious diseases, including a virulent form of measles, and also tuberculosis, were introduced, and the population steadily declined for many years, reaching its lowest point in 1919. Then it began to rise again and is still increasing.

The greatest danger of the early days —the seventies of the last century—was smallpox, and Sir William MacGregor, who was chief medical officer in Fiji at that time, imposed a quarantine and resolved to have the whole population vaccinated. As vaccinators he used young Fijians, who, after instruction, carried out the work so well that it was decided to make more use of them, and In 1910 a system of training Fijian

nurses was introduced, and there is now at Suva a nursing school with 100 pupils, The standard of the diploma is not equal to that of the State-registered nurse in this country, but that is because the general school education has not provided the native with sufficient educational background, rpHE same is true of the NMP. On JL qualifying they receive a restricted registration, having force only in the islands of the Pacific. They provide a type of medical service within the econo miC capacity of the Fijian administration, an( j it is an advantage that they are of t he social class of the natives themselves, gome of the Suva-trained doctors are a i re ady running their own hospitals. One in training.