Why Fijians

Develop Tb

From Our Own Correspondent

Suva, May 9.

TUBERCULOSIS among Fijians was the chief topic for discussion at a recent health conference at Nausori, Fiji.

The Southern District Medical Officer, Dr. T. U. Clunie, said that tuberculosis was a very much more infectious and con tagious disease than leprosy, which, up to the present, had gained much more public sympathy.

“The spread of tuberculosis is en couraged by overcrowding, bad housing and inadequate diet ... in Fiji it is a particular danger to the Fijian race, which does not have behind it genera tions of resistance or immunity, as found in Europe or India. The ratio of in fection in Fiji is four Fijians to one Indian”.

Dr. Clunie, as well as a number of prominent Fijian medical practitioners, made it clear that the Medical Depart ment is now achieving as much as limited funds and shortages of staff and equipment permit.

Injreply to questions about the reasons for Fijian susceptibility to the disease, Dr. Clunie said that under the communal system the Fijian, especially in the last decade, is much more subject to over crowding than the individualistic Indian, that the change in diet of young Fijians leaving their villages to work in mines, plantations, ships and towns is much more pronounced than in the case of Indians; and that young Fijian women working in towns undergo a similar drastic change in diet and conditions.

He added: “That the Fijian lacks ade quate immunity is confirmed by the fact that the disease in the Fijian usually runs a more rapid course than is the case with those races which have de veloped immunity throughout the centuries”.