“Like Rugby And Beer”

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31783, 13 September 1968, Page 3

“Like Rugby And Beer”

The World Health Organisation and the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund “went together like bacon and eggs”—or in a New Zealand context, “like Rugby and beer,” Miss Lakshmi Devi said at a recent luncheon meeting held by the Christchurch U.N.I.C.E.F. Regional Committee.

Miss Lakshmi Devi, who has seen relief teams from the two agencies working together in Indian villages, said W.H.O. had supplied the expert personnel on projects and U.N.1.C.E.F. had provided drugs, chemicals and vehicles, equipment for schools, had trained local workers and provided scholarships for others to study overseas. India is one of 117 countries in which U.N.I.C.E.F. is working. “I have seen a hill village in which everyone had malaria. The men and women who survived were too debilitated to work. Then W.H.O. put in teams and U.N.I.C.E.F. came along with drugs and equipment," she said. About seven years later she

saw the results of the relief teams' work. Crops were growing and the people were healthy. The place was blooming. U.N.I.C.E.F. had supplied village women with midwifery kits and taught them how to use the contents, such as scissors, forceps and bowls. The women were given instruction in elementary hygiene. “A village midwife might well be cutting corn outside when called into deliver a baby and she would not even wash her hands before attending the mother,” she said. “Just to teach them the Importance of having clean hands was the first step in saving babies’ lives.” The metal boxes which contained the kits were designed to be used as small sterilisers, heated on charcoal burners. “Too Good”

At first some of the women sold their midwifery kits and others kept them safely away because they were “too good to use.” The relief teams also did valuable work in explaining why they gave children injections against such diseases as yaws and gained the confidence of mothers, and in showing the women how to

use the protein foods supplied to them. “Every dollar spent on U.N.I.C.E.F. greetings cards will be put to effective use,” she said. Miss Lakshmi Devi is editor of the “New Zealand Nursing Journal.”

The daughter of Indian settlers, she trained as a nurse in Wellington and went to India in 1947 after independence and joined the staff of the College of Nursing in New Delhi. Later she became executive secretary of the Trained Nurses’ Association of India and editor of its journal.