SAMOAN HOSPITALS

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18236, 3 November 1933, Page 2

SAMOAN HOSPITALS

(, . C., Jik/ YU~* NATIVE GIRLS AS NURSES NURSING DIRECTOR’S VISIT [ . , " J :;.1 .... ; . !'■ When the Maui Pomare sailed up Lyttelton harbor on Monday one of her passengers was Miss Mary Director of Nursing for New Zealand, who in Iter official, capacity has been visiting tiie hospitals ol Apia and Niue Island! Both places come under! . the jurisdiction of the Department of External Affairs, aud> Miss. Urabtfl spent most of her time inspecting the hospitals and bringing New Zealand into touch with the work going on there. . .. Life in Samoa, with its tropical dim. all is ;vorv different from life in tlns : temperate part of the world, and even the diseases from which the people spfier are different, too. And the hospital, in Apia is not like the hospitals at Christchurch, Wellington, or Dunedin. In that, little town it is divided into three sections. “One section for white people one for Samoans, and one for ( hi* iiese," said Miss Lambie. “The Samoans are nursed in their own native fales, and when one is admitted lie or she brings two; friends for company and to do the cooking. , XT „ ■■The hospital at Apia has a New Zealand matron and a staff of New Zealand nurses. There is-also a large staff of Satnoan muses, whose training- occupies two years. Some of these girls remain at the hospital after their training is completed ; others return to work at one of the four centres —Savii, Monona, Alina ta, of Fanalanga Bay.Here.they are visited by the medical officer of health. Samoans 'make good nurses, and the girls are of the best- type— secondary schoolgirls, from the mission schools. “At Niue Island the, hospital .is much smaller, hut there, too, in addition T -0, New Zealand* nurses, there are native, girls-who are being trained to act as, nurses. They make goods'nurses.