Doctor deplores scale of aid

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32720, 24 September 1971, Page 10

Doctor deplores scale of aid

(Ntw Zealand Press Association)

UMARU, September $3.

The New Zealand Government wa* prepared to spend $500,000 towards hospitality for a handful of healthy athletes at the Commonwealth Games at Christchurch in 1974, yet it could spare but a tenth of the figure ($50,000) to help the Indian Government "play host” to 8,250,000 starving refugees from Eaat Pakistan, said Dr B. M. Laugesen, in Umaru today.

"Many thousand* of thou refugees, mainly children, have already died from malnutrition,” he said.

grammes at a 280-Md Church of North India hospital.

“Even New Zealand's total contribution of $423,000 to date, through C.O.R.S 0., is sufficient to provid* th* r*. fugees with only one meal,” he said. "It is no us* blaming foe Indian Government for being slow to set up treatment centres for refugees when th*y ar* burdened with providing food grains for 1,250,000 starving people, and w* have don* so little ourselves.”

Dr Laugeun, a Christchurch *urg*on. married, with thru Children, has worked in tha Punjab since 1065; ha will return to India next month as director of community h*alth pro-

Dr L*UM**n raid it wa* disappointing that N*w Zsaland could not hold up it* head among the Western nations with it* policy ef aid for needy countries.

Dr Laugesen, when referred to » recent television pro- - gramme depicting foe work of Mother Teresa and her nun* for tha maimed and dying in Calcutta, said it we* Unfortunate that New Z**-' landers w«r* bombarded with problem* on their television in Indi* were jurt on* mere problem among hundreds of oihsrs—“perhaps it i* * matter of dehumanisation, or eimply that viewers eventually become indifferent,"

Discueslng fo* suggestion of "dehumanisation” further, Dr Laugesen said, for example, that a London policeman would not hav* stones thrown at him when he was face to face with d*mon«tr*. for*, yet put him back • few hundred yard* and th* demonstrator* would throw stones at him—"the demonstrators cannot see his face.”