RATANA PA

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 77, Issue 221, 18 September 1934, Page 9

RATANA PA

INTRUSION ALLEGED THE MAORI VIEWPOINT. (By W.P.W.) The strong stench of a rumour of typhoid fever outbreak at Ratana Pa has so gained wade publicity that silence so long maintained must of necessity be broken in a belated der fence of the good name of a clean but much maligned pa. A report from s Wanganui by the Dominion Special Service appeared in the tDominion of , iSeptembcr 4 as follows: i “Typhoid Fever Outbreak at I Ratana Pa—Cases of typheid fever f have been reported at Ratana Pa, and r one death has occurred. Two patients 3 are being treated at Wanganui Hospi--5 tai and a third is under ooservation. ” a With the elimination of the noxious but false terms “typhoid” and “outt break.” the substance of the report is j admitted as correct. But, after all, such, a treatment if put to the report would reduce it to a harmless and incipid bit of common or garden news. But 5 that is really what it all amounts to. That, however, is not good enough. It lacks ginger and taste. The more dust that is raised the better. So reads the writer, the motive of the present systematic attack on Ratana and his pa > by a Government department which J had shown its teeth of animosty by 5 the determined stand it took success- » fully to prevent Ratana and his party t from completing a far North Auckland I tour, by invitation, a year ago, by the - expedience of a sleepy sickness ruse. Encouraged no doubt by its former suc- ; Aess the scene of its activities has been transferred to Ratana Pa and the l palatable ruse used is the bogey typhoid fever outbreak rumour. And it is bc- ; lieved that the pollution of the atmosphere by this confounded and un- > founded rumour has penetrated public credulity far and far away, as if by > radio. Speaking in brief of the general » health condition locally, Ratana Pa is clean, very clean. buch state of ! cleanliness is kept up throughout the ; year and the present period is not made an exception. The latrines, both public- and private, are pits 10 to 15 , feet in depth. These are carefullykept clean and tidy and the general sanitation of the pa compares more than favourably with that of the Maori camp at Rotorua during the , Prince of Wales’ visit in 1920. At ' that time an epidemic of influenza hud broken out. Here, however, the latrines , are so well looked after no misgiving is entertained respecting their condition. This system of latrines would have been replaced by that of the ■ flushing system long before to-day had . the Government of New Zealand ac- , ceded to Ratana’s request for a loan estimated at not more than the paltry sum of £2OO. This sum would have been a very great assistance to Ratana Pa, in that it would have effected the institution of a water supply system and, incidentally, also the establishment, in addition thereto, of a drainage and sewerage -system. Therefore, in the absence of the necessary materials, the best under the existing conditions arc adopted with marked success. Now, turning one’s attention to the Ratana Maori School, one learns that the resumption of school work'after the term holidays showed a good average attendance. Bad colds, however, were common all round, affecting both adults and children. The attendance, however, fell considerably after some of the children, probably more than half the school, were vaccinated on Thursday afternoon, the sixth inst. To date, September 12, the attendance is still much below the average as a result, not of any fancy typhoid fever, but of the baneful speculative operation. With all these disturbances at work, the headmaster (Mr. Parr) and his staff carry on their school duties, unchecked, not quarantined and not shut-up. If this bit of information is savoury to the palate of the scandal monger, whether official or civilian, he or she is welcome to chew it, the cud. Reflection might help. As already admitted, that with the omission of the words “typhoid” and “outbreak” the rest of the report cannot be denied. Two days after the i above report came out, the third case t therein mentioned was fired into the j hospital. As the officers of the Health g Department put it, it was another case j of the wretched scourge—typhoid fever. 1 They are so insistent and persistent in 1 their mad cry of “Typhoid fever! r Typhoid fever!” that one cannot help a but wonder that their brains might, fi after all, have in some mysterious way c been affected by typhoid fever germs, t At all events, allowance might be made e to the writer’to relate but briefly some of the incidents which befell the o “third case” before removal to the s hospital. The particular case under r consideration began on. August 21 and u for nearly the whole period of a fort- t night to September 2 the child, Awatea ti Matcparae, obstinately declined to take a any nourishment, living principally on T water and tea. During the day, how- s; ever, she was coaxed into taking milk h with beaten egg. The next day, the d third, she took a little warmed milk, c but afterwards took a preference for u milk in tea. In the afternoon she p asked for food, not drink. She was p given a piece of Maori-made unlcav- tl ened bread. The hard crusts were not tl removed and she accepted and ate a it small piece of the soft inside portion, fi leaving “no core.” Shortly after- a wards a caller entered the patient’s ti room with some sago custard with egg. t( She cried for the custard and it was oi given to her. The quantity was some- n: what liberal for a patient of her age, d between three and four years, and after h fasting for a period of not less than R a week and a-half, the custard followed c< in the wake of the bread, leaving r< barely any trace behind. The patient p did not appear any the worse for her g marvellous indulgence. If anything, b she appeared almost normal except for r< an occasional fit of coughing. The tl dietary feat and apparent effect besides a other details were reported to the T supreme head, who later, at a public tl meeting in the evening at the Ratana “ Hall, commented on the report, stress- cl ing more particularly the food the m patient indulged in. This happened on rt Monday and on Tuesday, on the whole, b< her condition improved. On Wednes- tl day morning she still had a slight pain v in the pit of her stomach, but her tern- ri peraturo had dropped considerably. The li drop in temperature, however, was not tl unexpected altogether as Ratana, the ft evening before, had hinted that d: copious perspiration was to be ex- c( pected. About daybreak the sweating in occurred and by morning she had T cooled down, and she certainly looked fe much improved. The case to this point in was fully reported to the supreme head pl by the writer, who took over this par- G ticular case from almost immediately ar after the heavy meal, and in his ab- de sence on other duty the district health T

inspector usurped the case as one of typhoid fever and committed the patient to the Children’s Ward at Wanganui Hospital, together with other patients from Ratana Pa and a very large number of non-fever patients. Notwithstanding that the nauseating rumour of an outbreak of typhoid fever at Ratana Pa hud widely gained a firm footing in Wanganui, a report has come through that the isolation of the typhoid fever patients took place not earlier perhaps than last Sunday week. With all the opportunities the officers of the Health Department had, they still are at sea to make a definite and reliable pronouncement upon the cases under special observation. However, they are leaving no likely stone unturned in e bewildering effort to secure a blazed track out of their dilemma. They have secured for testing purposes samples of blood, urine and fresh human excrement. And still they blunder on. To give their work more colour, the school children were the, unfortunate victims of an impromptu i programme. The headmaster gut a sur- 1 prise visit from the innoculator—and thereby placed in a false position from - the parents’ point of view. He was, as j it wore, party to the comedy as he failed to send notices to the parents ■ advising them of the pending opera- | tion. This he was physically unable i to do, for the intruder appeared with- j out notice and without leave. The rig- , niarole of the Health Department as i displayed by its officers is most humourous, if not grisly at times. In Ratana Pa t the supposed typhoid fever contacts mix up quite freely with the rest of the people. Anyway, the department seems to stop at nothing to gain its goal and Ratana simply sits back and let out to its officers as much rope a-s they ask to be paid out to them. Their intrusion is an annoyance and the manner at time provoking. They run in and out of the pa as if they have got, to use common parlance, “the freedom of the city.” All their efforts are directed to securing in any | manner available or possible, even the remotest hope of little of evidence to bolster up their blundering bluff that they arc baffled to a standstill by the very shadow of the typhoid fever rumour they were so ready to shell out like peas. The belated segregation of the patients in hospital is much too funny to think that such a virulent disease as typhoid or enteric fever could be trifled with with the brazen impunity some people madly suppose. The whole truth is that the cases are fever of a kind the sure cure for which is in the palm of the hand of the< physician that the Health and other Government departments have dogged and thwarted in a miserable effort to depose him and to stamp out his work. The remedy is always ready at hand

f'for those of Ratana’s people who will e.eoinc forward for it. Moreover, good -;and efficacious though the remedy be, r the prescription must of necessity be 1 y 1 strictly followed out to obtain the dej., sired result. Averting to the question of intrur sion, the free access availed of by the i•' officers concerned could effectively be s I chocked or determined as the case may 3 I be, just as Ratana may feel disposed t. to act. His p-a could be a closed sanc- . I tuary against which no law in the land 5 lean prevail. Ratana is truly the greatr ! est leader in the .world, ancient or 1 modern. The world-famed Union Jack . 1 J—the emblem of England ’s supremacy } : —is superseded only by that of - | Ratana’s and such precedence has been • exercised openly and publicly through- . I out the world, wherever Ratana and j I parlies under him have been, as far i ' back as the year 1921. Thus the power I Ratana wields to-day is that of the > I moon, star and sun, and is that of the • | Father, Son, Holy Spirit, the Faithful i i Angels and the Mouthpiece. Tahu ! Wiremu Katana, a coloured man, is the . deliverer of his people throughout the Dominion and oi the coloured races , j throughout the world. Just now he is ! building up his peop:e into a nation > I as numerous as the stars in heaven and jas the sands on the sea shore for num- > i ber. Birth control is condemned in I every shape and form as being inhuman, infanticide and race suicide. i I Simultaneous with race building is the | ; restoration of racial purity. Now that so much has been released, who else • but Tahu Wiremu Ratana is the i supreme head and leader of all? > SIX TYPHOID CASES HEALTH DEPT. STATEMENT. Upon the above article being subi mitted to it. the Department of Health issued the following statement:— | “Six cases of typhoid fever have entered the Wanganui Hospital from Ratana Ba. All the cases have been notified to the department by the med/ical superintendent and all have been proved positive typhoid by the bacteriologist. “The regulations do not require con- < tacts to be excluded from school unless the medical officer directs. “The first case to enter the hospital was on August 24. and the last on the seventh inst. One .of these cases died in hospital on the 14th inst. and the pa is under constant supervision by 4 various officers.”