TB Fight in Fiji

Progress in Anti- TB Fight in Fiji

From a Special Correspondent CRITICISM of the way in which the Fiji War Memorial Anti- Tuberculosis Fund has been ad ministered is not justified by investigations on the spot.

Anyone who goes up to Tamavua Sanitorium, or does the rounds of Viti Levu, any day of the week, may see what is being done, and how complex are the problems involved.

The relationship between the Fund and the Anti-TB Campaign should not be confused. The Fund is not a separate organisation operating its own private Anti-TB Campaign in the field. The Fund merely makes equipment, buildings and materials available to the Fiji Health Department, and the Health Department does the work. The work it does is limited by the amount of skilled manpower avail able, and many other factors. There fore the speed of progress is limited, not by the rate at which the Fund Trustees will make money available, but in the main by limiting factors in the Health Department.

There have been delays in receiv ing certain equipment, but these are not the fault of the Trustees.

They are due to unpredictable cir cumstances overseas. Some delay was also caused by damage to equipment in the Suva earthquake, last year. , Late in June the Trustees issued a special “Resume” of activities to date, in an effort to clear up some misunderstanding in regard to the administration” of the fund. The

closing paragraphs;

“There has been great progress in the campaign against tuber culosis during the four years that the War Memorial Anti-Tuber culosis Fund has existed. With the equipment supplied by the Trustees the tuberculosis problem has been attacked from many different aspects.

“During the period under review over 40,000 people have been tuber culin tested, and more than 25,000 vaccinated with BCG. The number of chest X-rays interpreted annually at the Tamavua Hospital has in creased from 8,000 in 1949 to 14,000 in 1953.

“The number of b^ ds . ® et for the treatment of the tuber culous has also been greased. I 1949 it was 162, to-day it is 34 and, further, there is a plan to m crease this number to 398 by the end of the year, i.e., this represents r% 045 ner cent, increase m h ve vears P All these increases have

automatically required increaseyn

\nl department? r sabor’atory depart

nl“As' 6 the activities of the War

Memorial Anti-Tuberculosis Fund

must be integrated with the facil ities provided by the Medical De partment, further long-term plan ning by the Trustees of the Fund is contingent upon the Medical De partment’s hospital policy, which is at present under review.”

The Chinese business interests of Magazine Aline, Tahiti, leased Mr.

Tony Bambridge’s former store. Mr.

Bambridge has shifted to the W. L.

Young Building, formerly home of S. R. Maxwell & Co. Chinese in terests in French Oceania now operate most of the local shipping.

Their vessels always manage to re turn from the outer islands loaded, where ships belonging to other owners often came back half-filled.