Nursing Difficulties In Northern India Mission

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30108, 17 April 1963, Page 2

Nursing Difficulties In Northern India Mission

The close-knit family unit was one of the main difficulties confronting medical workers in Northern India, a nursing supervisor from a Baptist mission hospital at Agartala, in Tripura State, said In Christchurch yesterday. She is Sister J. Smith, who has been nursing since 1950 at the hospital in Tripura, a buffer State which borders Assam in the north-west and East Pakistan in the west. She is at present visiting New Zealand Baptist churches during her year’s furlough. Transport in Northern India was extremely primitive, and if a member of a family fell sick at a distant village a close relative, which usually meant the whole family, made the trek to hospital and took an uncomfortably close interest in the patient's welfare, said Miss Smith.

“Visiting hours are almost impossible to dictate, as many strict Hindus will not accept the food cooked at the mission, and the delivery of their food can involve the whole family moving from the visitors’ compound into the hospital.

“Wives will not leave their babies and families, even when they are seriously ill, and grandmothers are determined to enter the theatre for the birth of their daughters’ children.”

The mission hospital, which' was built in 1950 to replace a ■ small, bamboo building, had! treated 12,100 outpatients and 708 inpatients in 1960-61, and was constantly over-crowded, said Miss Smith. “Education and language barriers make it difficult to train tribal girls as qualified nurses, but they make excellent practical nurses and are] able to take their knowledge back to outlying tribes and I villages.” she said. “However, there is a large] co-educational college in the] mission compound, and already we have sent one girl to a larger training hospital where she passed her Gov-1 ernment examinations. Two others are away at the pres-1 ent time, and there are 72 l girls and 110 boys in the col- i lege at the moment.

“In spite of the great pro-; gress being made by the] Indian Government, there is; much work to do, and we want the national trainees to] be able to handle the hospi-' tai themselves as soon as pos-, sible,” she said.