Us, Australia, Nz
p. 47 · Read in the full issue
Co-Operation
Aid Seriously Ill Man
THE air-age and miracle drugs have much to commend them despite hankerings for the “good old days.”
When Mr. M. F. Giles, a tech nician at Fanning Island cable station, became seriously ill early in October, an SOS was sent to Australia for supplies of cortisone and ACTH to be despatched by air.
The request was passed to the US Navy at Pearl Harbour. No sea plane was available there but a landplane made the 3,000 mile round-trip flight, successfully para chuting the drugs.
It became necessary, however, for the patient to be sent to hospital so a call was made on the RNZAF flying-boat squadron at Lauthala Bay, Fiji, and a Catalina made the long flight via Canton Island. Mr.
Giles was transferred to a Pan American passenger aircraft at Canton and flown to Sydney, where he arrived just a week after the first appeal for drugs had been made. He is now progressing satis factorily.
Fanning, one of the most isolated islands in the Pacific, is off the regular route of planes and ship ping, is about 1,500 miles from Hawaii and about 5,000 from Sydney.