MEDICAL WORK.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVI, Issue 100, 27 March 1936, Page 15

MEDICAL WORK.

SALAVATION AItAIY IN AFRICA. Alajor Agatha Battersby, of the Salvation Army, who lias been doing medical work among the natives in South Africa, arrived in Sydney recently, en route to Kenya, where she will open a new medical base that is being established for the natives. Alajor Battersby lias opened three of the five stations which the Salvation Army have in South Africa, two of these three being in Southern Rhodesia and the other in the Northern Transvaal, where she was last. This station is 400 miles north of Johannesburg, and Alajor Battersby and her two assistants were the only white women in the district, for although there are three mission stations quite near they are all in charge ol educated natives.

All the buildings are of brick, as white ants destroy any wooden houses; the houses are well equipped with medical needs. The station in Southern lihodesia is the only one with electricity, as the others are too small ,to run their own plants. In the Transvaal Major Battersby has been treating three and four hundred outpatients a week, but the hospital has only enough wards to accommodate 10 inpatients. In the rainy season, from December to March, the natives suffer very much from malaria and blackwater lever, and it then becomes necessary to take in extra patients, and put them in stretchers on the screened-in verandahs. Crocodile ' bites are the most common casualties, as it is a crocodile-infest-ed area, while a native who has been mauled by a lion is not an infrequent patient. Speaking of the maternity work, Major Battersby said the native methods were very crude, yet they resented help from a white male doctor. However, they did not object so strongly to a white woman, and a great deal of work had been done by women in this direction. As most of the native men work in the goldmines in Johannesburg and live in the compounds erected for them by the Government, the wumwi are left* in their native kraals and do the farming. They grow a great dea. of maize, but have recently taken to cultivating vegetables and a little wheat and rice. Until recently the nearest residential doctor was GO miles away, hut there is now a district doctor who. has his own hospital, and helps Major Battersby and her assistants a great deal by travelling out to many of tile sick natives which formerly they had to attend .to themselves. As there are no telephones the only means ot communication is by car over the practically roadless country, or bynatives who ride bicycles. Major Battersby has been on 10 months’ leave, which she is given every seven years; she travelled to Emdand and spent three months there before -going on to New Zealand through the Panama Canal, and then to Sydney. It was while she was in England she was asked to open the new station in Kenya. The Salvation Army have been doing evangelical work there for 20 years, hut this is the first medical station they have established.