NZ Contribution To Pacific Health
pp. 68-69 · Read in the full issue
Pacific Health
By E. E. Bush
DURING the last two or thisee years, attention has been paid to particular health problems as they affect the life, either of a particular community or of a people as a whole—not the whole field of tropical diseases, or of tropical hygiene, but some particular disease that has its origin in, and a devastating effect upon. Island life.
This research into causes, effects, and means of alleviating these particular dis eases, and of eradicating them, Will no doubt win the gratitude of Island peoples.
Fostered by the New Zealand Medical Re search Council, and by the Department of Island Territories, teams of workers have gone out to islands under the care or the trusteeship of New Zealand, to study at first hand the particular health problem to which they have been as signed, and for which they have special qualifications.
Last year, a team went to Western Samoa, to study skin diseases; this year, two teams have been operating. The first team, led by Sir Charles Hercus, DSO, OBE, MD, BDS, DPH, Dean of the Medi cal School of the University of Otago (NZ), went to the Cook Islands to study the incidence of filariasis, and the mos quito Culex, that causes so much distress.
Accompanying Sir Charles were Drs. G.
H. Satchell and P. Paine, and Mr. J. A.
Samuels, all of the University of Otago, and Dr. P. R. a. Davidson, resident medi cal officer, Cook Islands.
The team returned to New Zealand in the middle of February, and we eagerly await the outcome of their research. We know results do not necessarily follow
upon the investigations. Much careful and painstaking laboratory work has to follow, and then the results have to be arranged, codified, and made to assume some meaning. Filaria is a long-staying and often unsuspected guest. Then, after receiving hospitality for years, it ungrate fully turns upon its host, and attacks savagely, leaving him a victim of elephantiasis.
We dread that possibility, so with eager ness and faith, we await the findings of the team, and hope that Culex now has met his doom.
THE second inquiry into a particular health problem in the South Pacific was in the capable hands of Dr.
Muriel Bell, well-known New Zealand nutrition expert. At the invitation of the Director of the South Pacific Board of Health (Dr. Cruickshank) and of the Director of Medical Services in Western Samoa, Dr. Bell went to Fiji and to Wes tern Samoa and stayed for a fortnight in each place to study nutrition problems. (Fortunately for the people of Western Samoa her outward plane was delayed a week, which gave her extra time in the Territory.) Dr. Bell confined her attention to a search for possible protein deficiency, as this would give an indication of blood condition, and, by deduction, food and diet deficiencies. She used a test that had been used in the Army—it gives imme diately the specific gravity of the blood.
Both from the field work, and further tests in the laboratory, she was able to make some definite statements about her findings.
The village women must have thought the days of witchcraft and black magic had returned, when they saw the doctor alight from the Mobile Clinic, and from her black bag put out on a table a number of bottles each filled with a greenish blue mixture. Then the women and children were invited to line up. Each was pricked, until a drop of blood ap peared. This drop Dr. Bell put into one of the bottles. Before their amazed eyes these people saw their blood float, sink or remain suspended. After a few tests, Dr. Bell would know the specific gravity of the blood that had been tested. From this she could derive certain facts. An other sample of the blood was collected and taken back to the laboratory for tests on the plasma and a corpuscle count.
In Fiji, Dr. Bell found that results com pared favourably with those of children in New Zealand, but in Samoa, her re sults showed a very high protein content of the blood. This led her to suspect that the protein was being taken from some other portion of the body, to attack some infection, such as hookworm, which the person tested might have.
In some cases Dr. Bell was able to give immediate advice, for example about weaning a child; or a prescription to com bat anaemia. In general the anaemia was due to some infection.
NOW we can look forward to the next step in tackling these health problems, when the South Pacific Health Board meets shortly in Suva. No doubt the team which went to the Cook Islands will have a report to present, and Dr. Bell’s work will be available for the information of all the medical services in the Pacific.
Mr. E. W. P. Chinnery, formerly Gov ernment anthropologist in New Guinea, is back in Australia after a survey of the native population of New Ireland. He retired' last year but did the survey at Government request as he had done a similar survey 21 years ago. His 1950 survey showed that the natives, after the set-back of the war, were thriving.