CANCER WAR.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20473, 30 July 1928, Page 3

CANCER WAR.

AUSTRALIA’S EFFORTS. GRAVITY OF THE POSITION. (From Otjr Own Correspondent.) 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 cancer io 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 for funds to fight the pestilence, that the public was awakened to a consciousness of the gravity of tho 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 less than a third of an ounce, but worth £IOO,OOO, 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 with poignant hopelessness. Patients of the poorer class, for whom the radium was primarily intended, are now being treated at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital. The University hopes in a few months to he able to prepare the radium at its disposal in a safe form for distribution among other approved hospitals and practitioners. It is stated by those who ought to knoU 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 for cancer of certain organs, especially in advanced cases which do not lend themselves to surgery New South Wales and Queensland arc to-day putting up perhaps the biggest fight of all the States against the scourge.