MAORI CONCERT

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 83, 4 October 1930, Page 7

MAORI CONCERT

AID OF LEPERS.

Arrangements have been completed for the entertainments to be given in the Town Hall on Thursday and Friday "next by the Wanganui Maori Concert Party in aid of the lepers on Makogai Island. The programme will consist of a fine selection of hakas, pois, and songs by the talented company, which drew crowded houses on their.last visit to Wellington. The cause is a good one. Of the 4£7 lepers on the island, New Zealand is responsible for over 100, who have mostly come from the Cook Group and Samoa. Dr. Heiser, of the Rockefeller Foundation, a world authority on leprosy, recently visited the island, and expressed his high appreciation of the remarkably successful work being done their by the medical staff and the French nursing sisters of the. Order of Mary, whose indomitable spirit has brought a new element into the treatment of the patients—the spirit of hope for the future. But apart from the medical treatment, which has proved ' so successful, the keeping of the patients cheerful, is an important element in their cure. The funds sent from New Zealand will be devoted to the betterment of the conditions of the patients, and in helping to make their lot as happy as it is possible to make it. A selection of coloured slides of the island will be shown prior to the concerts. Their Excellencies Lord and Lady Bledisloe have'given their .patronage to the-concerts, and Her Excellency) will attend the opening concert.