HUNGER & DISEASE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 April 1943, Page 4

HUNGER & DISEASE

RIPE IN FRENCH CAPITAL.

DOCTOR PAINTS TRAGIC PICTURE.

The spectre- of hunger stalks in Paris. A letter received in London from a French doctor there paints a sad picture:—

“Food seized by the troops of occupation is the final blow to the undermining of the health of the French/especially in the large towns,” the doctor wrote. “In Paris, mortality due to tuberculosis of the lungs had increased by 50 per cent as compared with 1939. The most frequent cases occur among young people, especially adolescents. Forms of tuberculosis which were previously curable now take a rapid evolution and are fatal. Acute forms, rare before the war, are more and more frequent. Death often intervenes within six weeks to two months; both lungs are affected before treatment has had time to take effect. All the doctors agree that this evolution is due to underfeeding, and to that alone.

“More than perhaps anyone else, doctors note day by day the disastrous results of defeat and occupation. There is not one of cur patients who is not suffering from the effects of the present conditions. Emaciation, weakness, loss of memory, are general symptoms, too often the precursors of graver illnesses. Swelling due to hunger, unknown since the Middle Ages, has made its reappearance, and all suffer from it who have to make the official rations suffice.

“Doctors have difficulty in exercising their profession through lack of petrol for their cars. The ‘Order of Doctors,’ whose heads are appointed by the Minister for Public Health who makes his decisions without consulting us, has not even succeeded in getting from the Germans permission for doctors 1 to receive the ‘T’ card entitling them to a certain quantity of petrol. “Sweets containing vitamins are distributed. Daily food rations contain only 1,200, instead of the necessary 2,400 calories.

“Medicines are disappearing. The lack of insulin at times renders us • powerless before cases which consequently prove mortal;”