The Secret War on TB
p. 95 · Read in the full issue
in Fiji Results of 3-Year Campaign Unknown
SUVA, June 19. \NE of the major post-war dis f appointments in Fiji has been the way in which the wave of lited, enthusiastic generosity hich in 1949. carried the Colony’s r ar Memorial Anti-Tuberculosis md to a total of more than £60,000 Jus £20,000 —from the Govern ent) has been allowed to die away id virtually expire.
The campaign was launched and Lcceeded brilliantly, but for nearly tree years there has been very ;tle to inspire the slightest public ithusiasm. No doubt the inevitable lortages of trained staff and [uipment have retarded the cam lign, although there has been ex nsion of hospital accommodation r tuberculosis patients in some :ntres. Information, such as it is, x>ut the Colony s anti-TB work, is come almost entirely from Rcial reports—a source which pro des little material for publicists, Rcial or otherwise, to build on.
The fund’s accounts are published j the War Memorial Anti-Tubercu sis Trust Fund Board, but after jarly three years it is difficult to
get any sort of picture of the pro posed 10-year war against tubercu losis as a whole.
The Fijians are by far the worst sufferers from tuberculosis in these islands, but there are no official ngures to show the results of the survey started in 1947. In January this year it was unofficially esti mated that there was eight times
as much TB among Fijians as among Indians, but that estimate has been neither proved nor dis counted.
Two aged Chinese were before the Rabaul District Court recently charged with being in possession of opium. They were fined a total of £55 by Mr. F. Warner Shand.