GREAT SERVICE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 181, 1 August 1936, Page 11

GREAT SERVICE.

WORK AMONG LEPERS.

help much appreciated.

VALUE OF SYMPATHY.

A European patient on the island of Makogai, the central leper station in the Pacific, has written to a resident in New Zealand giving some particulars of the condition of affairs in the settlement. He says: "One is appalled at the thought of what would happen if the 600 patients now at Makogai were at large, suffering miserably in some remote corners of the Pacific and spreading the disease among their fellow men. This mere thought is enough for one to realise the enormous amount of good that is done at Makogai; not only in favour of the individual cases that are treated in.the settlement, but also in favour of the community at large, where people can go about fieely Without danger of being infected with the dreadful disease.

I "It would be impossible to praise too hiohly all those wlio have in some way or° other helped to make Makogai what lit is to-day after 23 years of existence; 'and among those are undoubtedly the i New Zealand people who year after year J have responded so liberally to the I appeal sent to them for the relief of I the patients. It is one thing just to | exist, waiting for the day when death I will come to put an end to a life of suffering, and quite another to live in an atmosphere of sympathy and kindness. Just as a nice soft bed and the kindly smile of a good nurse are half the cure to a patient, so sympathy irom a wide circle of friends contributes a o-reat deal to making happy the isolated community of Makogai. And indeed the Makogai patients require that sympathy from 'outside, were it only to make up for the affectionate care of which they are necessar/i.v deprived from those who are dear to thein. J

Misery Alleviated. "People generally picture to themselves a leper settlement as a place of intense and long suffering, ancl so it is undoubtedly, especially in some particular periods of the disease. But what about the moral sufferings? One redeeming feature is that natives as a rule are not so sensitive as we are; but even then they certainly do feel it, when it comes to cutting off, for years or for life, practically all connection with their home, relatives and friends. "And then if we go down to the younger generation, it is hardly less pathetic. There we find young men and girls who normally should be able to settle in life and found a home in which they would be happy. But they cannot think of it. . ... Again, we have the children, some of them so nice and smart, who had actually to be snatched away from their parents to be brought to this place. One of them caine recently from the Gilbert Islands. He

was in the Government school, and there was found to have contracted leprosy. He never had the courage to go and say good-bye to his people, but just jumped on board and came along. Is not this a dreadful tragedy, especially when one thinks that in the case of those dear children the disease has been with them probably from the beginning, it has been growing with them, and therefore they have very little chance of over being cured? "It is this immense misery that has to be alleviated some way or other. The medical and nursing staffs of the settlement are doing it with admirable zeal, using to that end the experience they have of the place and the people; but outsiders can also help very much. It is very gratifying to see how this has been understood in the whole Dominion of New Zealand, and it is hoped that the generosity of the people that has been so noteworthy in the past will be particularly so in this jubilee year of Makogai.