Report / Medical Department, Fiji.

  • Fiji. Medical Department
Date:
[1969]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report / Medical Department, Fiji. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    legislative COUNCIL OF FIJI MEDICAL DEPARTMENT Annual Report, 1969 PART A—PROLOGUE I—GENERAL INTRODUCTION Ihe Deed by which Fiji was ceded to Queen Victoria was signed on the 10th of October, 1874, was followed in 1875 by a disastrous measles epidemic as a result of which some 40,000 Fijians died in a matter of three months. 2. These two dissociated events each had a tremen¬ dous impact on the history of Fiji, the first on political and economic development and the second on medical progress. 3. This annual report represents an account of the Fiji medical scene in 1969 the last full year of the Colonial era, due to end on October 10th, 1970, the date set for Independence. This report therefore represents an inventory of medical progress to date and we hope it may be used as a bench mark against which past and future progress can be measured. 4. Fiji medical progress can be compared to a mountain climb, which was commenced at Cession and was followed soon after, in 1875, by the appointment of Dr. William McGregor, the first Government Medical Officer. 5. The decimation of the Fijian population by measles must have been one of the major factors in the decision to introduce Indian labour to Fiji and in consequence the possibility of the importation of smallpox which in turn undoubtedly resulted in the training of Fijian vaccinators, so initiating the long history of medical training in these islands. 6. As would be expected, the foothills of the develop¬ mental climb were covered rapidly. Training of medical personnel was commenced in 1886 at the Suva Medical School and nurse training was commenced in 1893 by Miss Frances Webberburn, a personal friend of Florence Nightingale. The development of an organi¬ sational structure proceeded apace and by the turn of the Century a chain of rural hospitals and dispensaries had been constructed, in addition to the Colony’s main hospital which had been moved from Levuka to Suva in 1882. • 7. The advent of the first world war interrupted medical development for the time being but with the peace came the construction of the Colonial War Memorial Hospital in Suva, which was officially opened in 1923, and the pioneering work of Dr. S. M. Lambert, the “ Yankee doctor in paradise ” resulted in the assistance of the Rockefeller Foundation towards the construction of the Central Medical School in the grounds of the Colonial War Memorial Hospital in Suva. The Central Medical School became the training centre for the islands of the South West Pacific. 8. The second world war once more interrupted the sequence of medical development but it was not with¬ out some benefit to medicine in the islands. Parts of a field hospital built by New Zealand troops in the Sabeto Valley near Nadi were transported to Lautoka and used to extend the hospital there, while the American 142nd General Hospital, built by the New Zealanders at Tamavua near Suva was taken over lock, stock and barrel and has since given yeoman service as the Colony’s Tuberculosis Hospital. 9. The years of war had uncovered the high incidence of Tuberculosis in the indigenous hijians and a War Memorial Anti-Tuberculosis Trust Fund was set up as a most fitting memorial to the second world war. This Fund administered by a dedicated Board of Trustees has played a major role in the subsequent control of the disease. 10. Two important post-war landmarks on the climb towards the summit, were the opening by her Majesty the Queen of the New Fiji School of Medicine in 1953 and the opening of a new Central Nursing School in 1954, both at Tamavua in Suva. These two events proved to be of the greatest importance and heralded the introduction of specialist post-graduate training for graduates of the Fiji School of Medicine who were previously regarded as mere auxiliaries. This development at home was followed by a steadily expanding programme of post-graduate training at first in Australia but subsequently and at ever increasing degree in New Zealand. 11. This programme of post-graduate education inevitably led to a gradual improvement in the status of the locally trained doctor, and has enabled the locally trained Medical Officer to assume positions of real importance in all the specialties, so that by the close of 1963, locally trained personnel occupied the majority of the Senior Medical Officer posts, all the Special Grade Medical Officer establishment and there were more Fiji School of Medicine than University graduates in the top half of the general Medical Officer scales. In addition, agreement had been reached to allow suitably qualified Fiji School of Medicine graduates to take any of the post-graduate medical diplomas offered by the New Zealand Universities as well as the examination for Membership of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians and Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons. Meanwhile, work proceeded to implement the medical sector of Govern¬ ment’s 1966-70 Plan which set out to replace most of the older hospitals, as well as to completely reorganise the rural health service. 12. This Plan provided for the development of a comprehensive preventive service based on a series of new health centres to replace the old dispensaries, and on the urban health offices. The four primary adminis¬ trative units or divisions, were each divided into four subdivisions and these in turn further divided into medical areas each with its own medical staff, while finally the areas were in turn divided into a series of nursing districts, each under the charge of a public health nurse. This organisation provides the largest possible area of interface between the department on the one hand and the people at the proverbial “ GRASS ROOTS ” on the other. To this organisa¬ tion is entrusted the provision of comprehensive maternal and child health services, including a delivery
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