Health in the United Kingdom dependencies.

  • Great Britain. Central Office of Information. Reference Division
Date:
1956
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Health in the United Kingdom dependencies. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    trained to standards which will reduce the dependence on oversea recruitment. One of the oldest training establishments in the dependencies is the Central Medical School in Suva, Fiji. It was opened in 1886 as a medical school for Fiji; in 1928 it was reorganized as a medical training centre for the British Pacific Islands, and now serves the whole of the Western Pacific, including islands under the administration or trusteeship of Australia, New Zealand and the United States. The School provides a five-year course for Assistant Medical Practitioners, a three-year course for Assistant Dental Practitioners, and shorter courses in laboratory technique, pharmacy, sanitation and radiography. Another example of regional co-operation in training is the West Indian Training Scheme, which enables the smaller Caribbean territories to send promising students to schools in Jamaica and Trinidad where more fully developed training centres exist. In the Federation of Malaya two model health clinics have been established to serve as centres for training field staff in all branches of rural health work. In Tanganyika a Medical Training Board co-ordinates training in all centres throughout the territory. In the Aden Protectorate two Health Service Training Centres for sub-professional staff were equipped in 1954 by a generous grant from the Nuffield Founda- tion. In the Northern Region of Nigeria the new Kano Medical School admitted its first group of students in April 1955. NURSING ‘Nursing is undertaken by a wide variety of persons with widely differing training. At an early date the only nurses were persons trained outside the territories, but it was soon realized that it would be necessary to draw largely on the local population if the need for nursing was to be met. Early training was undertaken by the regular medical and nursing staff. ‘In the beginning it was found almost universally impossible to obtain female volunteers for training. Little by little the male nurses reached a higher level and at the same time, with the advance of female education and the weakening of prejudices, female nurses began to replace the male nurses. These latter began to receive some added training and became dressers, medical orderlies or, at the highest level, medical assistants. . . .”4 In many territories girls have been trained as ‘community nurses’, a term with approximately the same meaning as health visitor, public health nurse or district nurse. The duties of such nurses were described in the report of the Rushcliffe Committee: ‘Ideally, the community nurse would be a nurse who had received, in addition to her training in general nursing, such instruction as would fit her to be a leader in a village community; to visit and attend patients in their homes and advise women about their household problems, the hygiene of the home and the care of children and infants; to conduct health propaganda among the village people; to inculcate the better use of local foodstuffs and better cooking methods; to watch over the health of the people in the houses she visits and to advise them about treatment; to visit schools, to inspect school children and to play a part in health education in schools, which is so 14nalysis of Information on Public Health. A/921 (United Nations, 1949).
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