CANCER CAMPAIGN

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 141, 11 December 1935, Page 13

CANCER CAMPAIGN

FAE-EEACHING 11EP0ET

AUSTRALIAN INVESTIGATOR

AN IMPRESSIVE ATTITUDE

(From "The Post's" Representative.) SYDNEY, November 29:

In the course of far-reaching recommendations to the Federal Government on the treatment of cancer, Dr. L. M. McKillqp, of Brisbane, who recently investigated the latest developments in Europe, advised that until the final report on mass radium therapy is issued by the Radium Commission no more radium should be purchased by the Commonwealth Government or State clinics. Its place, he states, can be taken by cheaper and more easily. operated apparatus, such as the Chaoul machine and the Phillips super-voltage machine. A new development is the application of cinematography to the early diagnosis of cancer cases.

He recommends that the New Zealand Government should be invited to co-operate with the Federal Government in holding an Australian cancer conference at Canberra in 1937.

The report, which embodies a new and impressive plan for a campaign in New Zealand as well as Australia, contains recommendations to combat the scourge on organised, national lines in a way that has already won the admiration of the Federal Health authorities. The main recommendations are:—

That a nation-wide scheme to study and combat cancer should be drawn up by a consultative committee, consisting of the Director-General of Health, the Chief .Medical Officer, the Federal Statistician, one nominee from each State Health Department, two nominees from each State cancer organisation (one clinician and one publicist), together with a nominee from each -university, this committee to co-operate with each State cancer organisation, the nominees of. which would act as liaison officers.

Every effort should be made to improve the standard of cancer diagnosis, especially in country centres. Except in the simplest cases general practitioners should be urged to send their cancer patients to the larger centres for treatment.

To this end it should be the aim of each capital city to erect and maintain, partly by Government aid and partly by donation and paying patients' fees, a thoroughly up-to-date tumor institute, in which poor and rich alike should be able to obtain highly specialised treatment, and in which suitable research could be carried out.

The strict suppression by legislation of all forms of quackery in regard to cancer diagnosis and treatment.

The employment at each clinic or group of clinics of a qualified physicist.