Native Medical Schools

ANGAU Has Two in New Guinea

IN a broadcast over the ABC network 1 at the end of August, John Hinde gave the following information about the native medical schools at present being operated in Papua and New Guinea by ANGAU.

Mr. Hinde obviously knows little about native medical instruction in the islands as it was before the Pacific was discovered by the Army. rE first Medical School for Natives, probably the first of its kind in the world, is half-way through its first course of lectures in New Guinea. The school aims to teach only basic medicine to the natives, but because of the respon sibility placed on the natives themselves by even such basic training the idea may have a profound effect on New Guinea’s Administration after the war. To-day’s basic, training may develop into full medical courses for the dark-skinned stu dents of Melanesia when peace comes again to the Islands.

New Guinea’s Medical Schools have been developed by ANGAU. Classes are planned to cover three months. There are 19 in the first class, and about, six weeks from now most of the 19 students will be sent out to native villages to prac tise the craft they have learned. They will be qualified by that time to diagnose and give simple treatment for most of the ills of their fellow-natives. In vil lages far from white men they will be able to alleviate the coughs of children, set fractures, treat simple skin troubles, care for fever patients and diagnose beri beri, yaws or dengue that afflict thousands of the million-odd people of Melanesia to-day. Lectures at the schools are given in sago-leaf thatched huts by Australians who really know Pidgin English.

As the Japanese are pushed further and further back, the strain on normal medi cal services in New Guinea becomes enormous. The medical training of the natives is no humanitarian gesture. These men are needed.

ACTUALLY, there are two Medical Schools in New Guinea—one at Port Moresby, and the second one at Lae.

The Moresby school is run by W/O Colin Stevens, of Adelaide, who went north with a Field Ambulance early in the war. The Lae school is run by Sgt. Ronald Andrews, of Toowoomba, Queensland, who joined ANGAU from the 25th Battalion, with which he fought at Milne Bay. The Lae school was actually pioneered by W/O Roderick Fowler, of Melbourne. Fowler has a talent for drawing, and he made medical diagrams captioned in Pidgin which the native students copy into their notebooks.

The Lae school is the most advanced, and most of the students there are anxious to follow in the footsteps of Cpl.

Ritako, Lance-Corporal Aspin and Lance- Corporal Topou, who are now doing im portant medical jobs. These three boys learned quickly from hospital experience without the benefit of a special school.

Ritako now works in a pathological laboratory, takes blood-smears, stains them, studies them with a microscope, and decides whether a patient has malaria.

Topou has charge of the sick parade at a labour camp; he treats all minor com plaints, is well qualified to weed out the malingerers.

Aspin was a school teacher at Finsch afen, who took to the bush when the Japs came. Now he is’ in charge of a surgical ward at a native hospital.

You have to remember that this is a class whose fathers were savages and head-hunters. New phrases and words have to be insinuated into their vocabu lary: for instance, TDS—the abbreviated medical Latin for three times a day—is far easier to us© than the Pidgin, “Three fella time along one fella day ” But Pidgin serves surprisingly well. The advice to a malaria patient goes, “Along killem sick catchem atebrin. Along loosim fever catchem aspirin. He mas kaikai plenty water. Lukautin good makim sleep.

Cover up along blanket. Catchem glass along mouth TDS”—which means, “To kill the malaria germ, give atebrin; to reduce the fever, give aspirin; he must drink plenty of water; watch him closely; make him sleep: cover him with a blan ket and put the thermometer in his mouth three times a day.”

Corporal J. O’Dwyer, son of Mrs.

Hellesoe, of Apia, W. Samoa, who was seriously wounded in Italy while serving with the New Zealand Forces, was re cently invalided home. The Apia Mothers’ Club gave him a very successful “welcome home” in the Tivoli Theatre on November 2.

Lieut. R. W. Feetum, AIF, formerly of Rabaul, previously reported “missing,” is now reported “missing believed prisoner of war, March, 1943.”