OTAGO MEDICAL SCHOOL TO SEND EXPEDITION TO COOK ISLANDS

Wanganui Chronicle, 8 November 1949, Page 6

OTAGO MEDICAL SCHOOL TO SEND EXPEDITION TO COOK ISLANDS

DUNEDIN, Yesterday (P.A.)—The New Zealand Medical Research Council plans to send an expedition from fthe Otago Medical School under the leadership of the dean of the school, k Sir Charles Hercus, to the Cook Islands during the coming university long vacation. The venture will have the full co-operation of the island territories department and is a continuation of the council’s policy of assisting the health services of the island territories of the South-west Pacific in an investigation of research Last year a similar expedition under Dr. H. D. Purves, then chief research officer for thyroid research at the school, spent three months in Western Samoa on a working survey of the incidence of diseases in that area.

This year’s expedition proposes to 3tudy the nutritional status of infants. children, and expectant mothers, the mosquitoes of the islands, particularly their ability to spread the tropical disease filariasis, and the most effective methods of controlling their breeding, and the incidence of various diseases such as tuberculosis, hookworm- and fungus diseases of the skin.

Dr. Muriel Bell, head of the nutrition research department of the Medical School, is to undertake a nutritional survey after completing a similar study in Fiji, to be done at the Invitation of the Fijian Government. She will be accompanied by Dr. Lucy Wills, a distinguished nutritional research worker from the United Kingdom. at present in New Zealand, and a world authority on types of anaemia related to protein deficiencies. P re " Jiminary research work done in Fiji and the Cook Islands suggests that there may be insufficient protein in thp diet of the people. Dr. G. M. Satchell and Miss V. Joilv. of the zoology department of Otago University, will undertake entomological studies, and Dr. T. Faine and Mr. J. A. Samuel (bacteriologist) Will assist Sir Charles with a more general survey. The party will probably leave late in December.