TUBERCULOSIS AMONG MAORIS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25372, 2 November 1943, Page 3

TUBERCULOSIS AMONG MAORIS

Sir,—The statement in Saturday’s Daily Times attributed to Dr Turbott, of the Health Department, that! the Maori is 10 times more susceptible to T.B. than the pakeha, is quite wrong. Undoubtedly, 10 times more Maoris die of T.B. than do whites, but this is not due to their susceptibility, but to their general sociological conditions, especially housing, which is at least 10 OtiOmes worse than that of the pakeha. The Health Department, the Government, and the public in general cannot escape their responsibility by alleging the poor resistance of the Maori as an excuse for a truly shocking state of affairs. The apologists for our high T.B. death rate in. Maoris say that the presumed short experience of the Maori with T.B. has not been long enough to give the race a resistance to the germ. Such people may find it rather difficult to explain why the Chinese, who have known the disease longer than the white man, still have an enormous death rate from it. The explanation is, of course, that both Maoris and Chinese live under appalling housing conditions, etc. It may interest your readers to know that the Maori deaths from T.B. are excluded from our vital statistics. There is no excuse for this. The United States of America include the negro T.B. deaths alont» with those of the white race. The explanation of this action by the New Zealand health authorities could be explained as a desire to whitewash our health statistics.—l am, etc., November 1. Doctor.