MAKOGAI ISLAND.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 59, 11 March 1926, Page 9

MAKOGAI ISLAND.

LIFE OF THE LEPERS. FIJIAN RESIDENT'S APPEAL. The name of Makogai Island, the leper sanctuary of Fiji, is fairly well known to New Zealanders, and of recent years people have become more enlightened about the nature of the beneficent -work carried on there. A visitor from Fiji, who is trying to enlist a more active interest by New Zealanders in Makogai is Mr. G. fiechit, of Suva. He has had to visit Auckland to make arrangements for his son's education in a local secondary school, and wishes to improve the opportunity by getting into touch Vith persons and institutions willing to assist in lightening the burden of the patients on the leper island. Speaking 1 to a "Star" reporter to-day, Mr. Sechit explained that he is a British-Indian in business at Suva, where he has a labour bureau, and that it has been his practice for the last nine years to pay a visit every six months to Makogai Island to cheer up his compatriots and others who are immured there.

There are, he said, about 380 patients on the island, comprising Indians, Fijians, Samoans and a few Europeans. They are in all stages of disability, but the great bulk of them are able to carry on some occupation, and they live in residences on various parts of the island, visiting the hospital periodically, or daily, as the case might be, for treatment and medicine. It was not the sort of. hopeless business that many people thought, for a percentage of the patients were recovering, and only recently some Indians had left for their home in India as cured. The patients went in for fishing as an occupation, and for diving for a class of shell which they sold at from £40 to £80 per ton according to quality. At the same time there were many who suffered grievous disability from" the wastage of limbs through the disease.

The Government yacht Pioneer visits the island every six months, and Mr. Sechit makes it his business to accompany the yacht each time. It is a sail of eight to ten hours, and the trip entails being away three days. Hβ prepares a hamper of cooked foods, curries and sweetmeats done in Indian st3 T le, and while the spread which attends his arrival is highly popular with the Indians, his hospitality is not restricted to his own countrymen. People all over Fiji, he said, joined in contributing offerings for the Makogai people, with the result that on his visit on December 22 he was able to take a present for every person on the island, hospital staff as well as patients, as a Christmas gift. He had also been enabled to secure at auction at Suva, and to fit up, a whaleboat as a gift to the Makogai residents. This not only helped them in their fishihg and getting shell, but was also a handy conveyance for disabled patients, who, lacking conveyance by water, had difficulty in making their way by road to the hospital for treatment.

Mr. Sechit says that two more boats are needed at Makogai, and he hoped that people in New Zealand might be sufficiently interested to help in getting the boats, and to also make offerings of other kinds. He will be returning to Suva by the Niagara on Tuesday week, but in the meantime hopes to get into touch, with persons interested in the work. 3lr. Sechit is staying at 129, Ponsonby Road.