REFUGEE DOCTORS

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 62, Issue 86, 22 January 1942, Page 3

REFUGEE DOCTORS

QUESTION OF REGISTRATION. LONG DISCUSSION BY SENATE (P.A.I WELLINGTON, January 21. A prolonged and animated discussion on the refugee doctors took place at a session of the New Zealand Univer. sity Senate which concluded yesterday and there is evidence of an acute divergence of views between the major ity of the senate and the Medical Council of New Zealand, the statutory body entrusted with the control of admission to the medical register. Nearly all the debate was in committee, but Dr. W. Newlands, Dunedin, chairman of the Medical Council and a member of the senate, gave a statement of the- position in an interview today.

About eight years ago the council received through the Prime Minister a communication from the Secretary for the Dominions, Mr J. H. Thomas, requesting a favourable attitude to ward application from refugee Jewish medical men seeking permission to practise in New Zealand, said Dr, Newlands.

Several were admitted directly, as they possessed diplomas of British licensing bodies and five others were admitted after one year’s study* and examination at the Medical School in Dunedin. In 1936 restrictions imposed by the Home Secretary in the United Kingdom resulted in a great flow of refugee immigrants to the Dominions and the New Zealand Medical Council raised the conditions for registration in New Zealand to three years’ attend ance at the Medical School with the corresponding examinations.

Twenty applicants were accepted on these terms and in 1939 the council decided that no, further applicants should receive this concession. During the war that policy had been maintained in spite of repeated applications.

To circumvent the Medical Council, one applicant had approached the University of New Zealand to be admitted as a medical student, with credit for threa years of the course, thus enabling him to obtain the M.B. Ch.B. degree after three years .study, with the consequent right to medical registration in practically all British Dominions, in accordance with the reciprocal agreements existing between the Medical Council of New Zealand and the corresponding authorities in the other Dominions and in Great Britain.

After an exhaustive debate, taken in committee, the senate by the narrowest of majorities, had advised the Chancellor to grant the application. That action, Dr. Newjpnds contended, was not only unfair to the earlier refugees, but must seriously imperil the valued reciprocity agreements in virtue of which New Zealand graduates were admitted to practice in other pacts of the Empire. It was unfortunate, to say the least, that the senate should have flouted the earnestly considered decision of the Medical Council, a body of equal status, closely associated with itself in respect of medical education and qualification. The consequences would result in numerous and difficult complications both in New Zealand and beyond it.