AN INCREASING RACE

New Zealand Times, Volume LIII, Issue 12619, 2 December 1926, Page 4

AN INCREASING RACE

HEALTH OF ISLANDERS GOOD WORK OF DOCTOR IN SAMOA CHILD WELFARE WORK Dr. T. R. Ritchie, Chief Medical Officer of Western Samoa, whq, is en route to Melbourne to attend a medical conference there to consider measures for the prevention of the spread of infectious diseases between the differenrt islands of the Pacific and the countries bordering on that ocean, was in Wellington yesterday. He has been in Samoa for six years, during four of which he has been chief medical officer and has been mainly responsible for the improvement in the health of the natives and overcoming diseases which have been such a scourge in the islands in the past; Dr. Ritchie states that in spite of the outbreak of dysentery in the beginning of the year, and the epidemic of influenza which swept the two islands as well as American Samoa, in September, the past year had been satisfactory. The influenza was of a mild type, and the natives carried out the instructions of the medical officers, with the result that there were only a few deaths, and those chiefly of elderly people. The ' natural increase during the nine months has been. 930 in a population of just under 38,000, which constituted a record. tfhe child welfare work was being carried out by the two lady doctors —one of them tue wife of the American Consul, who was giving her services voluntarily. It is anticipated that this year the infant mortality rate will be the lowest ever experienced in Samoa. The natives realise the necessity for bringing their chilldren for early treatment, and now, after four years of work in treating yaws, this disease in its early stages was rarely seen. Dr. Ritchie added that the percentage of the natural increase of the population for the past three years has been over 3 per cent, a year, so that the Samoans may now be described as a rapidly increasing race.