CAUSES

Te Ao Hou, December 1960, Page 7

CAUSES (1) Poor housing and overcrowding. These features are ones that must move hand in hand with the large birth-rate of the Maori, which in 1958 was 46.25 per thousand of mean population. When you have such a large proportion of the people still dependent and unable to help in the economy of the race, then I cannot see that one can have anything but sub-standard housing. At the conference held in Auckland last year, it was stated that 50% of Maori housing was sub-standard, perhaps not in actual fact of the type of housing, but in the number of people each house was expected to cater for. In the Statistical Report on the Maori-European Standard of Health, it was suggested that the communal way of life of the Maori might be responsible for the poor standards of health. I thought by this it meant that cross-infection occurred in sleeping in over-crowded houses and in meeting-houses. I feel however, that to say it is the communal life of the Maori is rather inaccurate. There is, after all, a lack of houses for the people and if one house holds fourteen or fifteen people because relatives are staying there with the family unit, it only means that if these relatives were not staying there, they would have to stay in another house. And overall, I think that if we were to spread the Maoris among the houses they have to occupy there would inevitably be overcrowding. I think it would be found that if one crowd of relatives went to stay with another crowd, it would not leave an empty house behind, but rather that their place would simply be filled by a group of relatives from another part of the country. Poor housing and overcrowding account for such infections as rheumatic fever, meningitis, pneumonia and enteritis. Quite a number of diseases from which the Maori suffers and for which there seems no real explanation could well be the aftermath of damage caused in the younger age groups. I feel that when a mother has too much work with too many children there are two reactions she might have. She might get worried about the whole business but this is not the usual Maori mode of behaviour when confronted with trouble; her other method of dealing with the situation would be simply to give up. She would find it too much of an effort to cook proper meals for her children, too much of an effort to clothe her children properly, and too much of an effort to look after her children with the simple methods of hygiene which she knows should be instituted. And so it is that these mothers neglect to blow their childrens' noses which is a simple measure that can avoid much of the ear and chest troubles that we have today. We have been told by the North Island people at the Auckland Conference, that tablets given by doctors have to be controlled from the school. Either the children have to be instructed that they must take their tablets when they get home, or the tablets have to be given from school. This is simply because these women have so many children they are unable to exert themselves to look after them. I think that if we want to attain the standards that are available to Europeans today, whether the mother is European or Maori, families should be limited to only four children. I find that very capable women can manage six children, but only a few can manage more. The rate of T.B. and rheumatic fever among the Maori is ten times the rate of the European. These two diseases however, are thought to increase where there is over-crowding and poor housing. All over the world—in Japan, and among the American negroes—the level of these diseases tends to decrease where there is an improvement in the level of sanitation and standards of living conditions.