Disappointed In Vietnam Stay

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30741, 4 May 1965, Page 2

Disappointed In Vietnam Stay

"The Press" Special Service AUCKLAND, May 3. Miss Nancy Boyd, a nursing sister who recently returned from Vietnam after spending a year as a member of the New Zealand medical team, said in Hamilton yesterday she had found the work disappointing.

Addressing members of the Waikato Lyceum Club, Miss : Boyd said: “We were prepared to teach to raise the standard of nursing but found we had no authority. All we ?d»d was their surgery for them. “At times there were moments of sheer frustration.

One wanted to change things, but it was just like hitting against a brick wall.” When the team left tb return to New Zealand and Miss Boyd asked some of the Vietnamese what would happen she was told things would probably return to the way they were before. Blood Donors

Miss Boyd said finding blood donors was difficult as the Vietnamese believed that blood taken away meant a part of the body was gone forever. Many of them would let their relations die rather than give blood. Vietnamese peasants had to live on lOd a day and were not interested in drinking milk. Water had to be boiled and so most of them drank Chinese tea.

Education had to be paid for and only one in six children went to school.