Medical Research At Cook Islands

Grey River Argus, 12 November 1949, Page 5

Medical Research At Cook Islands

DUNEDIN, November 7.

The New Zealand Medical- Research Council plans to send an expedition from the Otago Medical School under the leadership of the dean of the school (Sir Charles Hercus) to the Cook Islands during the university long vacation. The venture, which will have the full co-operation of the Island Territories Department, is a continuation of the council’s policy of assisting the health services of island territories of the south-west Pacific in research problems.

This year’s expedition proposes to study the nutritional status of infants children, and expectant mothers; mosquitos of the islands, particularly their ability to spread tropical disease, filariasis, and the most effective methods of controlling their breeding and incidence; and various diseases such as tuberculosis, hookworm, and fungus diseases of the skin. Dr. Muriel Bell, head of the nutrition research department of the Medical School, is to undertake the nutritional survey after completing a similar study in Fiji at the invitation of the Fijian Government. She will be accompanied by Dr. L. Wills, a- distinguished nutritional research worker from the United Kingdom, and a world authority on types of anaemia related to protein deficiencies. He is at present in New Zealand.

Preliminary research in Fiji and the Cook Islands suggests that there may be insufficient protein in the diet of the pople.

Dr. G. M. Satchell and Miss V. Jolly, of the zoology department, Otago University, will make entomological studies, and Dr. T. Faine and Mr. J. A. Samuel, bacteriologist, will assist Sir Charles Hercus with the more general survey. The party will probably leave late in December.