MISSION TO LEPERS SEEKS STAFF

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30795, 6 July 1965, Page 8

MISSION TO LEPERS SEEKS STAFF

The Mission to Lepers is at present seeking medical staff to form a second surgical ‘earn to work in Papua, said the secretary of the Christchurch area (Miss M. G. Titheridge) yesterday. Surgeons, doctors, nurses, physiotherapists and occupational therapists were wanted. A doctor, theatre sister and physiotherapist comprised the first team, which went to Papua at the beginning of this year. The New Zealand secretary of the mission (the Rev. M. Feist), who has just returned to Auckland after a flve-week visit to Papua to study the problems in treating leprosy, found that extra staff was needed there. Physiotherapy and occupational therapy were particularly important in treating deformaties of the hands and feet, Miss Titheridge said. While in Papua two years ago, the mission’s consulting surgeon discovered that the incidence of leprosy affecting these parts was higher than in any other area of the world he had visited.

It could take up to two years to prepare a badlycrippled hand for an operation, restoring it to a mobile state to enable tendons to be transplanted. Even after the disease had been arrested, through the use of sulphone drugs, the patient often was still handicapped, and might find that the social stigma re mained.

Fear and superstition sur-

rounding the disease had to be fought as well. Recently leprosy seemed to have disappeared in one highland region, but in fact the natives were killing the patients, and giving them ritual burial to drive away the “evil spirit." During his tour of Papua Mr Feist visited Dr. and Mrs J. Sturt, of Darfield, who are working at Anguganak, in the highlands.