Fight to Save Young Immigrant’s Life on Ship

Grey River Argus, 5 October 1948, Page 7

Fight to Save Young Immigrant’s Life on Ship

WELLINGTON, October 4

In the last 17. days before the Tamaroa from England berthed at Wellington yesterday, the ship’s doctor and 16 volunteer nurses worked unceasingly to keep a young Irish immigrant alive, and in the course of that period snatched him from death four times.

On September 16 the ship's doctor, Dr J. Egerton Williams, was called to a young Irishman to find him unconscious and gasping for breath.. To keep him breathing he was given oxygen therapy treatment. An abscess in the ear was discharging into the bloodstream, which was carrying the infection to the brain, causing temporary paralysis of different parts of the body. Sixteen volunteer nurses, the majority of them ' immigrants, who are coming to New . Zealand hospitals, worked in threehourly shifts for the final 17 days of the voyage in order the keep the patient" alive. With the limited equipment on the ship, the patient’s condition deteriorated, and during rough seas he was given an anaesthetic to counter the almost hourly attacks of fits. , .

“After we left Pitcairn Island, his condition improved, and as the shin approached Wellington the chances of getting him ashore alive increased”, said Dr Egerton Williams. An ambulance was waiting at the Wellington quayside. Dr Egerton Williams paid a tribute to the invaluable assistance he had received from his own staff and from the volunteer nurses, who included Miss Ngaire Lane, of the New Zealand Olympic team. He has written to the director of nursing services of the Health Department, comnlimenting the nurses.