CANCER RESEARCH

Southland Times, Issue 22489, 25 January 1935, Page 7

CANCER RESEARCH

EXPERT’S TOUR. REPORT SUBMITTED TO SOCIETY. (Per United Press Association.) Wellington, January 24. The New Zealand branch of _ the Empire Cancer Campaign has received a report from Dr W. M. Moran, radiotherapy consultant of the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Sydney, who recently investigated the cancer campaign in New Zealand. The report emphatically supports the Cancer Campaign Society’s advocacy of centralized treatment by special methods. Dr Moran says the education of the lay public in respect of cancer has here, as in other countries, been largely a failure in persuading sufferers to present themselves early. In fact, it was the wrong way to approach the problem. The only effective measure was the setting-up of public clinics for routine and regular examination. One of the greatest obstacles was the type of medical man who lost mental alertness and displayed fatalitism, born of ignorance of the new methods and lack of faith in their, efficacy. Dr Moran suggests legislation requiring practitioners to undergo refresher courses. Meanwhile, the best to be done is to create a public distrust of medical men who disdain to keep up with medical progress. Efficient use of radiation is obtainable only by reducing the treatment centres to a minimum and concentrating the best available personnel and equipment, but it is equally important to have many diagnostic centres. The effect of the present hospital policy has been to set up large and expensive institutions out of all proportion to the size of the towns and the number of patients.

Dr Moran comments that there is an excessive number of hospitals all seeking to function as base hospitals. This decentralization is a grave threat to the Otago Medical School by diverting patients from the centre, where medical students should obtain the experience available only in crowded wards and teeming out-patients’ departments.