More Medical Aid Exchanges Urged

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31498, 12 October 1967, Page 12

More Medical Aid Exchanges Urged

Increased medical aid to South-East Asian and Pacific countries, in the form of

exchange of teachers and researchers, was urged by the director of the medical unit at Princess Margaret Hospital, Dr D. W. Beaven, in an address to the council of the Canterbury Medical Research Foundation yesterday.

It was “urgent and obligatory” that more clinical postgraduate training by way of teachers and medical exchanges be provided for Fiji and Thailand, he said. “In Singapore and Malaysia, clinical standards are improving and these countries are now looking towards Australia and New Zealand for help in training their specialists in post-graduate clinical work and research which must be appropriate to their size and resources,” Dr Beaven said. “They no longer look to the United States; they, like us in New Zealand, are learning that all standards in national medical care depend on investment in research and development.” Dr Beaven said it was his conviction, which he shared with senior medical people in these countries, that in a time of economic stringency a few hundred thousand dollars for the right medical aid—in the form of exchange of teachers and researchers— might be a better investment than the millions being currently spent in a less humanitarian manner. _ ,

“Not only can we not afford not to spend more money on our own research workers, but we in the major New Zealand cities, as in Australia, must be prepared to secure our future economy and safety,” he said.

“To do this, we must for the next 20 years invest money to help exchange programmes involving university medical training and research with our near neighbours in South-East Asia and the Pacific. “I was told by one of the most senior and dedicated Thai doctors that one- of the main points of Communist propaganda in north-east Thailand was that nobody cared about prevalence, disease rates or treatment in the rural areas of South-East Asia.** - Referring to the work already done by New Zealanders in the study of disease in its natural setting. Dr Beaven said they could undertake this work with better insight and with much more economy of scarce resources than comparable or larger teams from the United States.

“We must in such exchanges of invaluable ideas and personnel, to date all too rare, inevitably benefit the people of our favoured and leisurely land. Thus the citizens of the towns of Canterbury will benefit,” he said. Dr Beaven also said more money was neces c "y to staff the Otago University medical departments so that they were able to send teachers or research workers to New Zealand’s near neighbours to teach them in their own countries. At present all departments in the Otago Medical School had had their adequate growth checked by ill-advised financial stringency, and they could not fulfil this important exchange role.