Medical Service?

Why No Doctors For NG Medical Service?

WITH some bewilderment I read in the “PlM’s” report (March issue) of the re-establishment of Civil Administration in Northern New Guinea that Mr. K. C. McMullen had moved north with a staff of well over 100, but that not one qualified medical officer was attached thereto. Neither apparently were any nurses.

At the outbreak of the Pacific war there were about 18 qualified medical officers in New Guinea.

The most reasonable part of Canberra’s promised New Order for New Guinea was that relating to augmented medical ser vices to the natives. It seems to be the first and most essential task.

During the Japanese occupation, the medical attention given natives was nil, and their state of health became, and re mains, alarming.

Canberra recently announced that, be tween October, 1945, and February, 1946, 1,011 doctors and 1,063 nurses had been discharged from the Services. Have none of these discharged medical men, who must now try to get back into civil prac tice, felt the call to volunteer for New Guinea, where their help is needed desperately? Or does the Government not encourage them to do this?

We were further informed from Can berra lately that 40 ex-Service doctors had been chosen by the National Health and Medical Research Council to study abroad. How many of these men will specialise in tropical medicine?

At the same time as we have this appalling shortage of medical personnel In New Guinea, the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Sydney (Professor R. H. Dew) made the amazing statement that there were too many students studying'medicine and that there would, in a few years, be far too many doctors in Australia.

Some of these “surplus” students could, perhaps, be persuaded to continue their studies with the ultimate purpose of going to New Guinea.

Mrs. Alice Allen Innes suggested re cently, through “PIM,” that a MacGregor

Memorial Wing to accommodate New Guinea native students, be added to the Suva Medical School. This is a splendid proposal and deserves the full support of all interested in the welfare of Pacific peoples. There were a large number of “Doctor-Boys” in New Guinea before the war, but their training was primitive and the service they gave, on the whole, was unsatisfactory. rE Australian Government should give number-one priority, in their New Guinea New Order, to improved medical services. No better reward could be given the so-called Fuzzy-Wuzzy Angels for their loyalty to the Allies dur

ing the war.-

Pat.