N.Z. nurse spent nine months in Vietnam

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32677, 5 August 1971, Page 6

N.Z. nurse spent nine months in Vietnam

Overcoming South Vietnamese reluctance to do the “menial” nursing tasks was one of the main problems encountered by Miss Barbara Cameron during her nine months at Linhiep Hospital, 20 miles out of Dalat in the Southern Highlands.

I At the hospital, run by 'Project Concern, Miss Came- , ron conducted a training course designed to fit South Vietnamese and Montegnard tribespeople to staff the hospital as nursing assistants. Although her course did not give the students the general theoretical knowledge of the New Zealand community nurse, they were taught to perform some duties not undertaken by registered nurses. “I tried to teach them that they had to learn to do everything for the patients, and not have ideas that they were superior,” she said yesterday. Many considered it “beneath them” to do such things as handle bed pans, an attitude Miss Cameron considers has cultural origins. But generally she found her trainees made excellent nurses, being very good with their hands.

Miss Cameron, the daughter of Mr and Mrs H. D. Cameron of Seddon, Marlborough, trained at the Wairau Hospital. She is now doing post-graduate study in Christchurch. Of her stay in South Vietnam, extended three months, she says: “It was tremendously interesting and exciting. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world, and some time I would like to go back.”

Security in the South Vietnam countryside, said Miss Cameron, had been declining as the American forces with-

idrew. After a raid, Miss Cameron had heard, it was decided it was Unsafe for the staff to remain at the hospital at night. Now, they live in Dalat, and travel out to the hospital each day. “The countryside belongs to the South Vietnamese in the daytime, and at night to the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong.” Miss Cameron learned to live with the prospect of North Vietnamese and Viet Cong raids, and the sound of artillery fire nearby. The hospital compound had been hit by small arms fire, grenades, and rockets. “It is difficult to say whether they were directed at us or not,” she said. After a raid, the local South Vietnamese district chief and South Vietnamese officers would express their regrets, in an effort, Miss Cameron thought, to make the volunteer workers “feel wanted.” Asked how much of the family structure remained intact, Miss Cameron replied: “Well, the village chiefs are Viet Cong targets. There were three killed while I was there, and they have to be replaced. There is a lot of destruction of homes and breaking up of families.” The hospital catered for 100 out-patients a day, and manned a public health team —composed of an engineer, Mr R. Meier, and a nurse, Miss Diane Thorbum, both of Christchurch. <

About 30 per cent of patients had suffered war injuries. The rest suffered from communicable diseases, the result of poor, temporary housing (most South Vietnamese lived in shacks made of beaten-down beer cans) and lack of sanitation.

Plague was serious, and there was also much dysentery, chest infections including tuberculosis, and some typhoid, tetanus and diphtheria. The area was fertile market gardening ground, and there was not as much malnutrition as Miss Cameron expected. Miss Cameron is concerned about the future of volunteer work among the rural people. “I think it’s safe enough in the cities and towns, but I don't know whether efforts in the country can go on without the American presence,” she said. Linhiep Hospital serves an area with a population of about 40,000. There is also a hospital in Dalat, with which the Project Concern volunteers worked closely. The staff is international. “But the New Zealanders were dominant, and I hope it could be carried on that \vay,” Miss Cameron said. “There are two vacancies at the hospital now—for a maintenance officer and a pharmacist.”

Anyone interested in working at the hospital may contact the Christchurch Project Concern president (Mr I. D. Bell), of 196 Ham Road.