Hospitals

Family "Nursing"

To End In Tongan

From Our Own Correspondent Nukualofa, December 20.

NEXT year the Medical Department of the Tongan Government is to take over the feeding and nursing of patients in the Nuku’alofa Hospital. To date Tonga has had the most ragtime hospitalisation service in the Pacific.

It has been the practice to leave the feeding and nursing of hospital patients in the hands of their families. When a patient is admitted to hospital, he is ac companied by a retinue consisting of sev eral members of his family including anyone from his aged grandparents to his youngest son or distant cousin. One or two of the party act as nurses, and attend the patient in the ward; the rest, who are there to prepare his meals and to perform other tasks in connection with his welfare, put up a camp in the hospital grounds. The camp usually consists of a small native hut, into which they all crowd, jostling for a place with their kerosene tin cooking utensils, native foodstuffs, firewood and family dogs.

The number of campers in the hospital grounds depends on the number of patients in the hospital. The retinues vary from a strength of six to a' round dozen. Therefore, when the hospital has its full complement of 80 patients, there

is a colony of some hundreds of people, and the grounds rapidly become littered with rubbish —banana leaves, empty tins, etc. The children in the retinues do not always bother to go to the latrines, and the adult Tongans spit where they will.

Consequently, the area around the hos pital, far from being one of sanitation, is a breeding place for flies and germs.

The present hospital staff has done all it can to remedy this state of affairs, but the only solution is for the Medical Department to take over the whole main tenance of the hospital and its patients.

This apparently has at last been realised by the Government, and a large Quonset hut has already been erected in the grounds and converted to the use of a kitchen staff. An additional dormitory, also a Quonset hut, has been erected near the nurses’ quarters to accommodate the new nursing recruits who will be required under the new scheme.

Mr. Harold Gatty, Pan-American man ager in the South Pacific, and Mr. Norman Howe, supply representative for the Panair Pacific Division, were in Noumea towards the end of November. It is understood that they conferred with the French Gov ernment, and with the commander of the American Forces about the Tontouta air field.