Annual report of the Director, Medical & Health Department / Colony of Mauritius.

  • Mauritius. Medical and Health Department
Date:
[1935]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Annual report of the Director, Medical & Health Department / Colony of Mauritius. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    10/138 (page 6)
    Moreover the prospect of successful recruitment under present conditions seems to be extremely remote. I am assuming that the employment of over¬ seas candidates is necessary. 14. The necessity for the employment of overseas candidates may not receive acknowledgment from those who believe that posts in the Government service should be filled by Mauritian candidates. So far as these scientific posts are concerned, however, the prospect of obtaining a fully trained and otherwise suitable officer of local origin is extremely remote. The minimum period of training necessary for such an appointment would be, in my opinion, three years spent in one or two large European laboratories, one of which would be conducting research into tropical problems. The expense of such training is considerable and no person would undertake if unless he was given a guarantee that he would find employment at the end of it. This would be an extermely risky thing to do, since the value of an officer does not lie in the training he has had but in the use he makes of it, and this can be determined only after he has had considerable experience. This last consideration also contains the reason for the undersirability of extending the scholarship of one of the successful candidates for the English Scholar¬ ship.. Lack of originality, of judgment, or of the critical faculty might render a fully trained candidate quite unsuitable to take charge. So far as this institution is concerned, I think the fact must be faced that a non- mauritian staff will be necessary and that if such a staff is to be recruited and kept, improvement in the conditions of service is imperative. 15. If we are to have light thrown upon local biological problems we must be prepared to depend upon our own resources. The Colony is too far distant from the more important centres of research to be able materially to benefit from their work. Therefore the local staff must be of a satisfactory standard, and this appears to be possible only by the employment of officers from overseas, in the meantime at least. It may be thought that I am giving undue prominence to this subject but a stud)/ of the published reports of the Laboratory's work for the past two years gives ample indication of the potentialities, at present more or less latent, of this institution for the elucidation of problems on whose ultimate solution important events may depend. HEALTH CENTRE SYSTEM 16. The increase in the poor and unemployment-relief work, much of of which is done by the Government Medical Officers and Dispensers in the rural districts] has prevented any progress from being made in the funda¬ mental reorganisation represented by the Health Centre System. To those who imagine this to be the age of speed it may come as a surprise to know that this type of organisation was first described in 1928 in a report submitted by me to the members of a commission of enquiry upon the Department. It was subsequently published. A number of other places have found it possible to adopt this type of organisation and have found in it a satisfactory contribution to the problem of providing a health organisation in rural areas. 1 he arrangements to which reference has been made in paragraph 1 of this report will eventually enable the system to be applied in the rural districts of the Colony. It is fully realised that the adoption of this system will throw a good ^al upon the Medical Officers in charge of the rural districts as well as upon the subordinate staff. But there is no doubt that if they can rise o the demands imposed by it they will find as time goes on and they become amihar with its working that they have a better administrative instrument at their disposal than they had m the past.