Training Melanesian Nurses Mission’s Task

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29830, 24 May 1962, Page 2

Training Melanesian Nurses Mission’s Task

The training of native nurses is the only hope of serving medically the many scattered islands of the New Hebrides, according to a Melanesian Mission nursing sister (Sister E. C. Pyatt) at present on furlough in New Zealand. Sister Pyatt, who is a sister of the Dean of Christchurch (the Very Rev. A. W. Pyatt) said yesterday that training Melanesian nurses was one of the biggest tasks the mission faced. The girls had a very low basic education, but had to be trained for work that no New Zealand nurse would undertake in similar conditions.

Returning to their own islands on completion of a three-year training course, the young women would be required to do maternity work, simple surgery, medical treatment of diseases, and child care. . Before the training school at Lolowal Hospital (where Sister Pyatt is stationed) was established in 1951, there w'ere no district nurses at all in the northern New Hebrides. There has been no doctor in the area, although the British medical officer in Vita, the capital, has been available for consultation by wireless and has visited the hospital. The first doctor would take up residence later this year, Sister Pyatt said. He is a New Zealander. Dr. Bruce Mackereth, from the Bay of

Plenty, who is at present doing a diploma course in tropical diseases at Sydney. His arrival would mark the progress the area had experienced medically in recent years, easing the responsibility of the three New Zealand sisters, and increasing the scope for medical service in the area, Sister Pyatt said. Lolowal Hospital had a maternity unit of 15 beds, a general hospital of 150 beds, and a leprosarium with 60 patients. The three New Zealanders did every type of nursing and treated such surgical cases as fractures and abscesses.

Before Melanesian nurses were available for duty in the islands, cases requiring attention very frequently died before they could be brought to hospital, Sister Pyatt said. Maternity cases were attended by island mid-

wives, but their knowledge varied from island to island and was not passed on to younger women when the hospital at Lolowai became established. As many maternity and general cases as possible were now brought into the hospital. All known lepers in the area were now in hospital and suspected cases were watched very carefully by the district nurses, so that they could be sent to hospital early. This meant that they could be treated and discharged within 18 months, Sister Pyatt said. "The islanders are terrified of leproey, but they do not realise that it is not highly infectious," Sister Pyatt said But they also did not realise the highly infectious nature of tuberculosis, one of the mission’s greatest problems Its high incidence was attributable not only to the islanders' disregard for precaution, but to their lowered resistance from malaria and

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intestinal parasites, the other two moat common diseases in the area. Sister Pyatt said. Obscure tropical diseases, found in densely-populated areas of the tropics, were uncommon in the New Hebrides.

“We are extremely grateful to the Lepers’ Trust Board for its assistance to our leprosarium,’’ she said. The board gave a generous annual allowance, and had arranged an adoption scheme whereby persons in New Zealand “adopted” a leper and took a personal interest in him. “It means a great deal to the patients to know they have friends in New Zealand personally interested in their welfare," Sister Pyatt said.

Sister Pyatt, who has been at Lolowai for 13 years, has been on leave for two months and a half. Next week she will attend a Board of Mission Deputation tour in Dunedin, and will spend six weeks in a Wellington hospital to gain further theatre experience.