Disquiet Over Fiji’s

TB Situation

From Our Own Correspondent SUVA, December 12.

AN Auckland tourist who wandered from the tourist track to com ment tartly on the Tamavua Hospital (November PIM) could have wandered further to advant age.

Complaints about the hospital— which appears to suffer from chronic understaffing at key points—are common among the people most concerned with Tamavua—that is, the Fijians. Occasionally, these complaints spill into the local press and cause a minor rumpus, but usually there is reluctance to make a fuss because of a fear that a commotion might rebound on to the heads of the wrong people.

It may be remembered that in

1949 the war memorial campaign raised £6o,ooo—of which the Fijian people contributed an enormously disproportionate share and to which the Government added £20,000.

That was the nucleus of a fund in J Yet as far as anybody outside °® c . ia4 circles knows, the progress of the campaign is anything but t £ y Fljians but t"^!® not one official word has been said t° .indicate how far the alarming incidence of TB among the Fijians as been curbed, yet alone arrested, The first semi-panic over Fijian TB started after discoveries were made when thousands of the finest young Fijian men were medically examined for Army purposes in 1942-45. Nothing has been said of what the medical examinations of recruits for Malaya may have re vealed.