Tb Problem In South Pacific

From Our Brisbane Correspondent DOCTOR E. A. North of the Common wealth Serum Laboratories and Dr.

T. Jamieson of the Health Depart ment, Papua and New Guinea, recently addressed the Medical Congress in Bris bane on TB immunisation.

They said that in New Guinea coastal areas, tuberculosis had long been a men ace, and to check its spread, a mass BCG immunisation scheme was started in De cember, 1949. Results, they said, had been satisfactory. (Bacillua Calmette- Guerin (BCG) is innoculation with living organisms, which do not possess suffici ent virulence to produce ill effects, but stimulate the body to raise its defensive mechanism against invasion by the more harmful tubercule bacillus).

The incidence of TB the speakers said, among most of the indigent people of the South Pacific was difficult to assess. What

was known of it was disquieting.

The people referred to in the address included Australian aborigines, and natives of New Guinea, the Solomons, New Hebrides, New Caledonia, Gilbert and Ellis Islands, New Zealand, Fiji, Samoa, and Tahiti.

Dr. E. Massal, health member of the South Pacific Commission’s research council, considered TB a major health problem throughout the area. He pro poses to conduct epidemiological surveys in the different countries when data is collected and to organise research into methods for controlling the disease.

Two Papuan companies, Milne Bay Traders, Ltd., and Loma Rubber Estates, Ltd., are in liquidation—the former be cause the shareholders decided to wind up voluntarily, and the latter because “it cannot by reason of its liabilities, con tinue its business.”

Mr. Len Usher, the Fiji Government’s Public Relations Officer, paid Sydney a brief visit in July, for consultation with high officials of the South Pacific Commission.

Mr. W. Grainger Johnson, of Suva, managing director of W. R. Carpenter and Co. (Fiji), Ltd., is at present on a visit to Australia. He proposes to spend a

month’s holiday in Christchurch, NZ, with his family, before returning to Fiji, The Governor of Fiji, Sir Brian Free ston and Lady Freeston, visited the Yasawas, Rotuma and some of the Lau Group in July. Thev were able to do this by taking advantage of the cruise of HMNZS Bellona which was visiting- Fiji and other Pacific Islands.

A recent photograph of Mrs. Aggie Grey, well known guest-hause proprietor of Apia, W.

Samoa. She is shown here at an Apia race meeting.