LEPER COLONY

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21469, 18 April 1933, Page 10

LEPER COLONY

i. PATIENTS AT MAKOGAI ENCOURAGING RESULTS ,/ » ADVANCED METHODS USED DECREASE IN INMATES Recent advances in the treatment of leprosy have been introduced with encouraging results into the leper hospital on tho island of Makogai, Fiji. According to the medical superintendent, Dr. C. J. Austin, who arrived by the Niagara from Suva yesterday, 200 patients, have been discharged from th/ island since 1918. It is 110 longer the case, therefore, that a leper patient is necessarily doomed to "life imprisonment" on the island. Under modern methods of treatment there is a reasonable chance that he or sho will be cured, or, as the doctors cautiously / prefer to say, the disease will be arrested. Dr. Austin, who is proceeding to England on leave, succeeded Dr. E. A. Neff as medical superintendent at the leper -hospital five years ago, He paid t-lie hospital at present accommodated 4(30 patients, compared with 954 in 1926, the decrease being largely accounted for by the increased number of patients discharged. 1 roatinont, he said, had greatly improved in recent "Vears and the latest advances in medical science were being successfully applied at the hospital. Patients who improved sufficiently to warrant discharge were recommended by tho modi cal superintendent for examination by a board of Government medical officers, which met every six months and which could obtain tho authority of / the Governor of Fiji to have the patient Bent back to his home muler certain restrictions. Tho vast majority of the leper pationts o4 the island are Fijians and Indians, but thero are in addition approximately 40 Cook Islanders, 15 Samoans and 10 Tongans. The small white population includes two New Zealanders. On the whole, Europeans and '/ aboriginals appear to be least affected bv the disease, which attacks in most virulent form peoples living in a semicivilised state. Dr. Austin said the patients and the hospital authorities were greatly indebted to the people of New Zealaud for many comforts and luxuries which were sent from Auckland every Christmas. One of the New Zealand / gifts was a cinema machine, which was supplied regularly by the Paramount Corporation with suitable films, while the dynamos for the supply of electric power, another Isew Zealand gift, furnished tho hospital with electric light. These gifts were highly appreciated, said Dr. Austin; they provided the patients with some of the comforts and relaxations enjoyed by the civilised' world and were a powerr ful means of maintaining morale among an unfortunate colony which ordinarily might be inclined to give way to despair. .