Medical Teams In Vietnam

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32214, 5 February 1970, Page 10

Medical Teams In Vietnam

It will be tragic for the people of Vietnam if New Zealand medical teams have to be withdrawn from the war zone because the United States is handing more of the war over to the Saigon Government After more than six years New Zealand medical and welfare teams, maintained by the Government, the Services, the Red Cross and other organisations, have an outstanding record of service to civilian casualties and refugees. The two surgical teams alone have performed hundreds of operations each month and have virtually kept two hospitals and several outlying clinics in operation. As “ The Press ” noted in June after a report of the work done by the Services medical team at Bong Son: “ Many New “ Zealanders may have serious misgivings about New “ Zealand’s involvement in South Vietnam. No-one “need have any doubt about the value of New “Zealand’s medical contribution”.

The vexed questions of supply and security for the New Zealanders must be solved. So far both hospitals, at Qui Nhon and Bong Son, have been relatively free from attack, even though the areas are far from secure, perhaps because they have treated all comers, even when Viet Cong casualties were suspected to be among them. Whether this situation would continue once South Vietnamese troops were in complete control is doubtful. Furthermore. the New Zealand teams have depended on the United States for the supply of drugs and equipment. A regular supply from the Vietnamese is uncertain, at best. Already up to 30 per cent of the supplies sent to Qui Nhon by the Americans through the Vietnamese Government never get there —because of corruption, theft, or diversion to the Viet Cong.

The real medical work in Vietnam has barely begun. Bubonic plague, cholera, and typhoid are endemic although campaigns in the few areas secure enough for a concentrated effort have shown they can be heavily reduced. Many of the injuries treated by the New Zealanders have little to do with the war—they include motor-scooter accident cases from Vietnams chaotic traffic and burns from the careless use of petrol, which is stolen from the army and sold as a substitute for kerosene in village stoves. New Zealand doctors have reported refugees with “ incredible tumors and complaints that “ should have been treated years before ”, Mr A. D. Hodge, a surgeon from New Plymouth, said on his return from Vietnam a year ago: “ When the war “ finishes doctors will see the real problem ”. The medical teams have not been able to carry out the work they went to Vietnam to perform—the training of Vietnamese staff to run hospitals. Amid the urgent demands for their skills there has been little time for training others: few recruits have been put forward by Saigon, and some of these have proved untrainable. As South Vietnam expands its armed forces fewer and fewer resources in skilled manpower and money are likely to be available for civilian hospitals. At least one community in the United States plans to build a hospital in Vietnam as a permanent memorial to American dead. New Zealand is building a children’s ward at Qui Nhon as a memorial to Sir Walter Nash. But. as the New Zealand medical teams know only too well, buildings alone do not make hospitals. The New Zealand Government and people, not least those who have expressed the most apparent concern for events in Vietnam, have an obligation to ensure that the superb medical effort of the last six years does not dwindle away because of the change in the conduct of the war.