The Daily News FRIDAY, OCTOBER 19. A MENACE TO HEALTH.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVII, Issue 81869, 19 October 1906, Page 2

The Daily News FRIDAY, OCTOBER 19. A MENACE TO HEALTH.

SINCE the bubonic plague scare and the Gracchus small pox scaro of a few ,ycais back our Legislature has passed Act after Act in its endeavour to protect the health of the public. Some of the requirements enforced are fads, purely and simply, but there are other provisions that are as poetical as they are necessary. Quite recently an occupier of a house in which there had been a case of infectious disease, was fined substantially for failing to notify the authorities of its presence. It is laid down in the Public Health Act that whenever any person is found to be sick of anyinfectious disease, or of any sickness the symptoms of which raise a reasonable suspicion that it may be an infectious disease, the occupier of the house concerned has to give prompt notice of the same to the authorities, while the medical practitioner who attend the ipatient,, and the chemist who supplies medicine or drugs for the patient, has also to give, under pain of suspension from practice or business, immediate notice to the authorities, The purpose of this provision is obvious, and its wisdom, not to be questioned. But while we are particular in this respect in connection with the white seciion of the ommunity, we aro lamentably indiffer ent about the Maori section. * * * #

MAORIS are not enamoured of pakeha doctors, and very much less able to diagnose tho nature of an'y illness than their white brethern. And so it is seldom that the natives consult doctors and frequent that Maoris suffering from infectious diseases spread the same amongst the white peop.e. It is a notorious fact that Maori pahs are hot-beds of some of the worst forms of disease. Tyjihoi'd*, theria, tuberculosis and other infectious diseases, besides minor diseases, like diphtheritic sore throat, scab and itch, are epidemical in most of tiie local pahs. Their prevalence is never reported 0 the Heaith Department. Why not? Why should the health of the general community be menaced day after day, week after week, and month after month ? * » * »

Maoris throng the streets of New Plymouth. They mix to a certain extent with tho local whites, l'hcy do business with them. Maori women hawk flowers, articles of their own manufacture, etc..j arpund the; houses. They meet the whites and mix with tiiein. People are accustomed i» meeting and mixing \vu,. the Maoris, and don't pause to consider that K.c dusky individua s might have just come from pahs reek ing with disease, or that it is the easiest thing imaginable for the disease 10 be transmitted from one person to another. 't he Maoris have Mini own doctors, it is true, but there aie only two of them, and they cannot be expected to cover the whole of the ground of tho colony. Doctors I'omarc and Buck pay flying visits to the pahs of Taranaki. ' They do -heir best to improve ihe sanitary and general condition of the kaingas, but their work is noi followed up, and 111 practical good accomplished.

The Government subsidises medical men in different pails to at,end tu the Maoris. But thc.y onlv attend those who call at their surgeries. If the doctors are called to t.ie pahs the Maoris have 10 pay likf the woi,e people fur the doctors' services. And as the Maoris have little or 110 cash, unci bfcause of ihe Maoris' natural antipathy to the medical gentlemen, it is rarely ever that a kainga sees a pak'ha doctor. Not long ago a Macii wahine strolled imo a doctur'surgery. There was little the matter with her, she said, but the doctor found that she was suffering from pneumonia in an aggravated form. She was given medicine and her people informed of her condition. They took her to the kainga, where she had the ordinary Maori attention, in the course of a few days she was a corpse. Another case. An ablebodied youth consulted a doctor, who found he was afflicted with typhoid and, against his will, the young tellow was taken to the hospital, where ne was attended to til! after tho turning point m the course of the fever was reached. Mis relatives thereupon insisted on his removal to the pah. whithe, he was taken. In a few davs he was a dead man. There are other similar cases. * * * *

There is something radically wrong with a system that permits of the happening of this son of thing. The remedy, it seems to us, is to bring all Maori settlements and villages under the Same regulations regarding the protection of health as app..y to Kuropeans; to appoint or subsidise docdoctors to regularly inspect the kain£as, attend sick Maoris, see that the sanitary conditions ate earned out according to hygienic laws; to pro. vide Maori cottage hospitals in the centres where there is Maori population; and to put into speedy operation the approved scheme of training Maori gills in nursing at hospitals. Something rea i ly must be d(Jne (q remedy the present deplorable state "t .ittairs, if n o L l 0 p rotect ( | le heajih hi tin; genejal cumimiiiitv, and the sooner a start « made the' better will be lor Maori and European mike.