How Nonga Graduates

Assist NG Health Programme

From Our Own Correspondent

Rabaul, June 26.

THE Medical and Hygiene Training School for natives, situated at Nonga, about three and a half miles from Rabaul township, is built in an ideal setting on the foreshores of the north coast of Gazelle Peninsula. It was estab lished in February, 1948, for the purpose of training natives to be Medical Assis tants or Hygiene Assistants.

The present enrolment is 150 students of whom 25 are native women. Fifty of them are now studying for their final examinations which commence at the end of June. The successful candidates will then be considered ready to return to their villages as either Medical Assis tants or Hygiene Assistants—whichever was their chosen study.

The Medical Assistants will be equipped with drugs and instruments with which their trading has made them thoroughly familiar: the Hygiene Assistants will be equipped with DDT spray and the tools required in their special work. They both will be on the payroll of the Depart ment of Public Health.

The normal hours of the school are 23 hours each week but in an all-out effort to pass their examinations most of the students are studying from between 50 to 60 hours at the present time. With such enthusiasm surely great benefit will be derived from these people when they re turn to their villages.

Nonga is one of the schools set up under the Commonwealth Reconstruction Training Scheme.

Mr. Harold Williams, missionary asso ciate, has arrived safely at Ndui Ndui, New Hebrides.