STUDY IN N.Z.FOR TWO YEARS

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29384, 10 December 1960, Page 4

STUDY IN N.Z.FOR TWO YEARS

Health Inspector From Fiji

Studying in the Christchurch office of the Department of Health is a man who has chosen to stay away from his wife and young son for two years on a shoestring budget to gain his qualifications. He is Mr Mahboob Hasrat Ali, an Indian from Nandi, Fiji, who has paid his own way to New Zealand to win the health inspector’s certificate of the Royal Society of Health. Mr Ali is spending six months in Christchurch, taking the practical part of his inspector’s course after the nine months’ theoretical course, which he completed at .-ie National Health Institute in Wellington. If he passes his examinatons next May he will probably take a nine months’ meat inspection course in Auckland. “I’d much prefer to go home for a spell, but it’s too expensive travelling,” he said yesterday. Before coming to New Zealand Mr Ali was an assistant inspector of health in the Ba district of Fiji. As there is no health school in the colony, he had to choose among Britain, Australia, and New Zealand to train for his full inspection certificate. He is glad he chose New Zealand, even though he has found it hard to get used to the climate. "This is a beautiful country,” he said.

Sanitation was the main health problem in Fiji, with education as the best way of improving things, Mr Ali said. He would concentrate on education when he got home. Nevertheless, as health inspector he would be responsible for all departments of the public health programme— Sanitation and building as well as educating people to understand the need, for these. Although sanitation conditions were still unsatisfactory by New Zealand standards, there had been a great improvement over recent years. This was reflected in the disease statistics. When Mr Ali was a boy, diseases such as tuberculosis and typhoid were rife, but much less was now heard of them. There was a new threat, however, from such diseases as poliomyelitis, which seemed mainly to arrive with the travellers and tourists who were visiting the islands in ever-in-creasing numbers.