CANCER WAR.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLVIII, Issue 208, 1 August 1928, Page 2

CANCER WAR.

AUSTRALIA’S EFFORTS,

GRAVITY OF THE POSITION,

SYDNEY, July 19. If there were an average of six deaths a day in Sydney from, say, typhoid fever, the community would be in something of a state of panic. That is the tragic toll which dread causer is taking in New South Wales, yet the attitude of the people towards the scourge has been somewhat fatalistic. It' was only 18 months ago, when a rousing appeal was made tor funds to light the pestilence, that the public was awakened to a consciousness of the gravity of the position. It then relapsed into a state of indifference, but Sydney University, into whose lap its generous offerings were poured, got immediately to work. To-day, the first fruits of that fund are witnessed in the war which has now been declared upon cancer by the Sydney University, in co-operation with the Federal Government and Royal Prince Alfred Hospital. The first shot has been fired. It is not suggested that the new scheme of attack, with the aid of the Federal Government’s imported radium, a mighty atom weighing ie'B than a third of an ounce, but worth £109,099, is going to work miracles, but it is confidently believed that it will lessen the shocking death rate and bring hope to many to-day who are weighed down ivith poignant hopelessness. Patients of the poorer class, for whom rife radium was primarily intended, ure now being treated at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital. The University hopes in a few months to be able to prepare the radium at its disposal in a side form for distribution among other approved hospitals and practitioners. It is stated by those who ought to know that one could put into a spoon the whole of the pure imported radium in Australia to-day. The Royal Prince Alfred Hospital has had apportioned to it, out of the Federal Government’s costly mite, worth £250,000 just after the war, about one-twenty-seventh of an ounce into about 280 separate pieces. Small as it is, it is capable of much good, especially in certain types of skin and tongue cancers, and fpi cancer of curtain organs, especially in advances cases which do not lend themselves to surgery. New South Wales and Queensland are today putting up perhaps the biggest fight of all the States against the scourge.