Central Medical

School

Suva Hopes to Get Support of New USA Administrations

PLANS afoot for the future adminis tration of the Caroline, Marshall and Mariana Islands, taken by the Americans from the Japanese, and to be controlled in future by the United States, may have an important bearing upon the Central Medical School, Suva.

The CMS is the now famous institution to which are sent selected native students from all the Pacific Islands Territories in the Central and South Pacific, except the Australian-controlled Territories.

After a strict, intensive training extend ing over four years, the successful students qualify as native medical prac titioners, and return to their own Terri tories, where they devote themselves to medical work among their own people.

In preparing administrative plans, covering the new Territories which are to be the responsibility of America, the United States Navy has been giving care ful attention to the medical services to be made available to the native popula tions. The Navy has planned a school for the training of native doctors; and one of the alternatives under considera tion is a hook-up with the CMS in Suva.

THE Americans, in the end, may decide to establish their own school—but there are many sound, logical reasons why they should support the Suva Institution. The Americans are planning on behalf of the Micronesians of the Caroline, Marshall and Mariana Islands. Micronesians, already success fully trained in Suva, have come from the Gilberts, from Ocean Island, and from Nauru. Students from American Samoa have qualified at Suva as NMP’s and have served in the American Navy for many years.

Before World War 11, USA Navy men

were keen supporters of the CMS at Suva.

Plans for training at Suva, natives from Guam, sent by the American Administra tion there, were almost complete, before they were dislocated by World War 11.

Diseases in the Marshalls, Carolines and Marianas are similar to those met with in Polynesia and Melanesia. The charac ter and customs of the natives are alike.

The CMS in Suva is a flexible insti tution, designed to take care of the medi cal training of natives of all Pacific Territories. That is why the non-co-operative and apparently unfriendly attitude of the Australian Government to the school — which never has been explained—has been such a disappointment to the directors.

THE endeavour of the directors has been to maintain, at the school, very simple social conditions, so that students there are not in any way made unsuitable for their main purpose.

A great disservice to Islands natives generally could be done, for example, if the Americans, instead of supporting the CMS at Suva, were to establish a wholly American training school at Guam, where there is every likelihood of the students being treated in the too generous American way. A too great elaboration of living conditions in the school would produce a wrong type of NMP. The men who graduate in Suva are, for the most part, actuated by high ideals of service, and go willingly to the life which they have chosen in their vil lages, which is simple almost to the point of severity.

Twenty years of trial and error have proved the soundness of the methods fol lowed in Suva, in regard to living condi tions and the relationship between the different races trained there.

If, as is hoped, the new American controlled Administrations from north of the Equator should support the Central Medical School at Suva, the strength, value and usefulness of the institution will be greatly increased.