Fiji's TB Campaign

Moving Slowly

From Our Own Correspondent

Suva, Apr. 28

SLOWLY the campaign against tuber culosis in Fiii is getting under way.

The sanatorium at Tamavua, a few miles out of Suva, is still, however, one of the few visible signs that there is a campaign at all, beyond endless talk and references to “surveys” and “plans” in the annual reports of the Medical Depart ment.

But the end of April saw the return to Suva of Macu Salato, a notable graduate of the Central Medical School, who volunteered for service with the Navv during the war, went to London with Fiji’s Victory Contingent, and remained to'take a long course in anti-tuberculosis work.

With him was Manzoor Beg, also ex- Medical School, the one Fiji-Indian who was on active service in the Solomons.

He was mentioned in dispatches and for that reason was included in the Victory Contingent—an honour which no one grudged him personally, although there was some resentment among the Euro peans and part-Europeans. It was felt that London would be given the impres sion that the Fiji Indians had made an active contribution to the victory—which they had not.

Macu Salatc who was awarded a Scholarship bv the British National As sociation for the Prevention of Tubercu losis, is typical of the best of the younger Fijians to-day. He has taken every op portunity to study and has that instinc tive capacity to absorb and practise modern medical knowledge which the Central Medical School has discovered latent in many of its Fijians.

He will do more for the Fijian tuber culosis battle than any number of official reports.

In nine months in England the two students studied at the Mass Miniature Radiography Unit of the Ministry of wealth, a London tuberculosis dispensary, a surgical tuberculosis centre in Lanca shire, the Broomfield Sanatorium in Es sex, a research centre in Wales and in Portsmouth.