MEDICAL MISSIONS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20823, 16 March 1931, Page 11

MEDICAL MISSIONS.

WORK IN THE SOLOMONS

WAR ON TROPICAL DISEASES

An outline of the great work being carried out by Methodist medical missionaries in the Solomon Islands was given by Dr. ¥,. G. Savers, a member of the mission staff, in the Pitt Street Methodist Church last evening.

"Every Solomon Island child suffers from malaria very early in life, and in the olden days, before the advent of the medical missionary, numbers of children spent many weeks each year in a state of fever, while others died," said Dr. Sayers. "To-day, as soon as a child becomes stricken with malaria, the mother knows all about it, and brings the sufferer to the mission hospital at Roviana, where lie is treated and is able to be about again in a few days. We are trying to do away with malaria and eventually hope to conquer the carrier pest, the anopheles mosquito." Dr. Sayers said that yaws, another infectious disease, was also being treated successfully by the mission staff. Epidemics of dysentery were common in the Solomons and used to wipe out practically whole villages, but to-day it was unusual for a case to be lost. "A good deal of our work is among lepers," continued the doctor. "In India 1.5 to every 1000 of the population are affected by leprosy, but in my district in tho Solomons at least five persons iu every 1000 are lepers, some villages having as many as ten sufferers. We cannot guarantee to cure every case, but we can guarantee to improve every case and to cure the early cases."

Referring to infant mortality in tho Solomons, Dr. Savers said that at one time 270 out of every 1000 babies born, died in their first year, and many others died in the second and third years. Now a, baby clinic had been formed by the mission and it. was not, unusual for a mother to travel two or three days in a canon to receive advice and treatment for her child. Tho Government statis tician recently stated that the population was gradually increasing, instead of do dining, and tho missionaries felt very gratified.