MEDICAL WORK IN SERBIA

Otago Witness, Issue 3212, 6 October 1915, Page 76

MEDICAL WORK IN SERBIA

THE FIGHT AGAINST TYPHUS

CONTINUED HELP NEEDED

(From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, July 16. Ihe value of the work which British and other foreign doctors and nurses have done in Serbia can hardly be overestimated, declares the special correspondent of The limes, writing from Salonika. In the whole country at tiie outbreak of the war there were fewer than 400 Serbian doctors. The mortality among them has been so great that now there are believed to be only 230. Nothing could exceed the devotion with which these Serbian doctors worked and still work; but there are not enough of them for the army alone, so that the civil population has been almost entirely without medical help or sanitary advice. Except in a very few towns it is difficult to say that there w r as anything to which the term sanitation could be applied; and when the epidemics of typhus and typhoid broke out there was neither barrier nor, in the multitude, any thought that a barrier was possible to their spread. Typhus has now been reduced to such comparatively trivial proportions that one almost begins to speak of it in the past tense, though there will be many thousands of deaths from it yet. If we place the total number during winter and spring at 200,000 wo shall probably be well under the mark, continues the correspondent. The chief, perhaps the only, medium of communication of typhus is lice. The centres from which the epidemic started were the army and the Austrian prisoners, of whom it must be remembered that Serbia took the amazing number of 70,000. From these two prime sources the scourge spread to all classes of the population. EARLY CONDITIONS. “ The conditions which confronted those who came here in the early days—such as Lady Paget’s unit or those who worked from November onwards in the Fourth Reserve Hospital at Skopbe—are almost indescribable'. One hears of one Russian woman, without a doctor or any medical Supplies, trying week after week to care for 700 patients in one awful building. One hears of six British doctors, without nurses Or water or appliances of any kind, struggling to look after 2000 wounded and sick, scattered through three buildings, when as many new patients were drafted in each night as were carried out dead in the morning. One hears of soldiers lying two and three in a bed, or packed upon the floors, wounds and frostbite, smallpox, diphtheria, typhus, and typhoid together, in unventilated buildings amid every kind of squalor and filth. Some day a roll of honour should be compiled of those who fought that fight. It will contain the names of British and Americans, French, Russians, and Serbs. There are now some 420 British doctors and nurses in Serbia; and they have not l-400th of the work which fell upon that first devoted band. At the moment, indeed, the chief complaint is of lack of work; for there have been no wounded for some five monthsj typhus and typhoid have declined until they 'are no longer a serious public menace, and cholera, however anxiously anticipated. lias not yet arrived. Besides Colonel Hunter and his staff of 30 doctors of the R.A.M.C., who are at Belgrade, the British hospital visits at present in Serbia seem to be as follows: Lady Paget’s Hospital, at Skopbe (with whom Miss E. J. Peter, of Christchurch, served), with staff of 45; Lady Wimborne’s Hospital, at Skopbe (to which Miss Mabel Atkinson, of Christchurch, was to be attached), with staff of 45; Scottish Women’s Hospital at Kraguievatz, staff 40; Scottish Women (Second Cnit), at Belgrade, staff 50; British Red Cross (Second Unit), at Yrnjetska Banja, staff 50; Dr Berry’s Hospital at Vrnjetsha Banja, staff 24; The Wounded Allies’ Aid (Second Unit), at Kraguievatz, staff 16; Allies’ Field Ambulance British (Red Cross), at Kraguievatz, staff 16; First British Field Hospital, at Skopbe, staff 25; British Farmers’ Unit at Belgrade, staff 45; Mrs Sinclair Stohart s Field Hospital at Kraguievatz, staff 47; British Eastern Auxiliary, at Belgrade, staff 16 Another New Zealand nurse who was to go out to Serbia in March was Miss Ethel Mary Lewis, of Otaki. SORE NEED OF FUNDS. The correspondent says that for the moment there is need of no more British nurses or hospital units, unless for certain specific purposes, in Serbia. This situation may change at almost any minute. Henewed fighting may produce great quantities of newly wounded men, or cholera (or anything else) may break out. For. t-* l ® PJ?' sent then, those who are idle in berbia are ’but remaining idle ready for an emergency. For a long time there will be sore need' of funds. The Serbian Red Cross itself is in straits for ready money. Distress in many parte of the country is great though it is difficult to determine how bad it is° at any one poirit, even with expert investigating officers on the spot. Though, therefore, fighting is for the moment stilled, and disease checked so that .nurses and hospitals are idle, let no one in England suppose that Serbia’s needs have been met They have hardly yet been touched. Only the immediate urgency has been tided over There is still an urgent called for all the Generosity that the British public can show.