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REGIONAL CONFERENCE OF THE 4' ORLD HEALTH ORGANISATION
HELD IN NEd GUINEA
Oi 5TH SEPTEMBER. 1963
Speech by the Prime Minister. the Rt. Hon. Sir Robert Menzies
Sir Distinguished Representatives of your various Countries,
Ladies and Gentlemen My colleague, Senator Wade, rather glorifies me
this morning. He attributes my presence entirely to virtue on
my part. I would like to tell you that the last time I was
here though not in this building they did their best to kill
me. ? Laughter) They cooked me, they cooked me, they cooked me,
they ran me around and I agreed to come this time on strict
condition that the weather would be better. ( Laughter) And
so it is. So it is not only a matter of pure virtue but of
personal comfort. Sir, the Constitution of the World Health Organisation
not only contains those splendid words that were quoted by
my colleague, but they also contain a definition of health, and
SI read this with great interest. They describe " health" as a
W state of complete mental, physical and social well-being and not
merely the absence of disease or infirmity. I think most of us
must be rather unhealthy. " A state of complete mental, physical
and social well-being" Well, give those words an extensive
interpretation and they will cover almost all of the material
problems of mankind today and therefore they would tend to defeat
themselves. But what I like about the work of the W. H. 0 is that
it has not lost itself in generalisation it has rather concentrated
its mind upon the proposition that health in the nations
and among the people does not represent merely the absence of
* disease but includes these great activities to which my colleague
has referred. In brief, the World Health Organisation has not
been just academic in its approach to problems. On every occasion,
it has sought to give a practical application to the work of
medical scientists and discoverers and to give that practical
application in particular places for particular purposes.
I was informed before I came', here that 100 health
projects had been'assisted by the World Health Organisation in
the Western Pacific 100 different and specific projects.
N6w', Sir, having said that to indicate that I do understand the
essentially practical purposes that you have, I perhaps ought to
remind those of us who are not medical men that it is a'pretty
modern idea that public health problems are capable of solution,
I don't think that people troubled much about public health
problems, as we understand them, a couple of centuries ago. In
Great Britain the eighteenth century has become known as the
century of good taste, and indeed it was in many ways, but it
must have produced mrany bad tastes in its fashion. because public
health, as we understand it, was entirely unknown and indeed the
practice of medicine in any of its forms was extraordinarily
primitive. Indeed, one has only to go back to the middle of the
nineteenth century a period which'was well remembered by people
like my own parents, so that we are not so far removed from the
middle of the nineteenth century. Up to that time when the Red
Cross was created, when the great figure and genius of Florence
Nightingale became known nursing as we understand it, treatment
of the wounded, as we understand it, was . almost entirely unknown.
For the most'part in the dreadful occurrences of war, the wounded
were left to die; casualties which turned out to be fatal
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casualties were enormous compared to what they would be under
similar circumstances today. And it was a good long time after
that before it was realised by the hard economic elements in the
community that disease is economically wasteful, that no country
can afford to have any disease which skill and effort can avert.,
that economically this wastage of the economic contribution made
by the individual is not to be tolerated. That is a very modern
idea, And so we have entered what we are pleased to believe
to be the modern and enlightened era of which the World Health
Organisation is a manifestation, with 115 members and a record of'L
immense vigour and practical quality. But Sir, the health work
of the modern world and the health work of the WJ. H. O. can't be
done in a vacuum, they can't be done extra-territorially. What we
all need to do, what you have shown you understand you must do, is
to get down to cases, not to be too abstract, not to regard any
problem as being capable of being solved in an office or a lab.
somewhere else in the world.
And, therefore, as I understand the W* H its main
function is to stimulate activity in specific areas and to a great
extent in relation to specific diseases of great endemic or
epidemic proportions. Your topic for this Conference is an
illustration of this fact, and when you have a conference you are
not merely engaging in a series of abstract remarks, you are
concentrating your attention on a particular problem and pooling
experience and skill7as it turns out here, from thirteen or fourteen
different countries. Now Sir, you happen to be in Australian territory and
I happen to be by the grace of the electors of Australia, though
only narrowly ILau ghter), the Prime Minister. Now, in these
Territories Papua and New G uinea we in Australia have accepted
great responsibilities responsibilities much too great to be cast
off our shoulders lighZ-heartedly or in a spirit of pure theory.
We have immense responsibilities in these Territories and vie
propose, of course, to discharge them. W4e look forward to the
time when these Territories, the people of these Territories will
be completely politically and economically independent, when they
will be a living vital country controlling their own destiny. : This
is the great objective of intelligent people in the twentieth
century. But in the meantime, we, the Government of Australia
have tremendous responsibilities and we will carry them forwarA to
a conclusion, not slowly, not in a wild hurry, always with the
understanding that the paramount consideration is the welfare of
the people of the Territories and not a mere desire to satisfy
somebody else, Now this is a health organisation conference and
therefore I should tell you that in the pursuit of this duty to
which I have referred, the Administration, while very far from
satisfied none of us can afford to be satisfied; if you were
satisfied about the state of health in the world, you wouldn't
be here; this is something about which you will never get
satisfaction and therefore the Administration is not satisfied,
but I venture to say that it can be very properly proud of what
has been done, remembering always that these Territories embrace
hundreds of different types of peoples, literally hundreds of
different languages, stages of civilisation or of uncivilisation
which-are perhaps not to be found very easily in any other part of
the world, ranging from what you see around you in Port Moresby
to what we naight see if we had the time and took the trouble and
had the endurance to go into some of the maore remote parts of
Papua and New Guinea. This is a tremendously difficult place and
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yet, I repeat, the Administration may be very proud of what has
been done. So far as we have been able to discover, there was
simply no evidence of any established medical system in this great
tract of country until European settlement first occurred. The
indigenous inhabitants, as was not uncommon perhaps at that stage
in the world's history, believed that disease was a product of
somae mysterious force, perhaps a sorcerer, perhaps some form of
witchcraft. There were rather obscure, almost instinctive and
superstitious ideas about how illness came about and how it ought
to be dealt with, In other words there was a state of affairs
here only a decade three, four decades ago, five decades ago
whic& strongly resembled the state of affairs which existed in a
great number of our countries hundreds and hundreds of years ago,
so that the task was a difficult one and had to be concentrated
into a fairly short period of time.
Well, by 1923 that's only forty years ago there
were in these Territories 14 hospitals and 13 medical officers.
No great matter was it? Fourteen hospitals, 13 medical officers
represented an enormous improvement on what had been but it was
still no great matter. Then the progress that followed was
interrupted by war because this country saw war and saw it in a
destructive form. Itve been reminded that the war destroyed every
hospital except those at Port Moresby and at Samarai. Here is a
splendid example, if that is the right word to choose of the
destruction that war can bring about. Only two hospitals left
standing. But of course the war also, by the strange irony of
fate or the not-always-unaerstood wisdom of Providence, brought
great advances in medicine with the anti-malarials and the
insecticides and the anti-biotics and the vaccines. I suppose that
two of the remarkable effects of the war were that in medical
science the discovery of how to fight disease was accelerated
beyond words while, at the same time, in the world of the physicist,
we saw results following upon the splitting of the atom which have,
up to now, rather increased the apprehensions of mankind but may,
in due course, properly understood, add enormously to its resources.
So there was a plus; there was a minus.
Well, Sir when the war was over the Administration
resaunmddh as p ese on with increasing activity ever since.
Great territory-wide campaigns by 195? were being waged against
yaws, against against malaria, leprosy there was an
increasing medical examination of schoolchildren and, after all,
it isntt so long since there were hardly any schoolchildren because
there were hardly any schools. This has been a tremendous
development that I dontt take time to speak of this morning but
there has been, over this period, an increasing medical examination
of schoolchildren and a dental health service,
In 1962/ 63 the last financial year, there was an
extensive procurement ol vaccine against what? Very interesting
to recall the diseases that were being attacked. Against
tetanus, against whooping-cough, which in some of our countries
is regarded sometimes as a sort of juvenile eccentricity, regarded
with indifference by husbands and causing immense trouble for
wives, but still, whooping cough in a country not so well developed
can be a dread disease, and it was attacked. . Diphtheria,
poliomyelitis, smallpox, cholera, T. B all these things being
attacked by the procurement and use of vaccines with tremendous
personal work being done by regular health patrols and, of course,
by the improvement of nutrition,
I said then " by regular health patrols". If you look
at the relief map out in the foyer outside, somewhat exaggerated
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no dou'st for purposes of demonstration, you will realise that
this is, in many respects a tremendously mountainous country
with here and there a roe d, with here and there a track, but f'or
the most part presenting the most tremendous difficulties of
access, Therefore, perhaps, cmabling more and more small
communities in small valleys or in remote corners to be suffering
from some disease, to be almost extinguishing themselves without
access from the people who might be able to help them. And if
anybody ought to go down in history here with immense fame, it
is the people who have gone out on patrol, who have put up with
all these hardships, who have reached these inaccessible places
in order to bring medical health and apply medical resources to
the needs of the country. That goes indeed in Papua and New
Guinea for almost all the activities of administration, We are
living in an age in which, to bring the ordinary instruments of
peace and progress and benefit to people, requires immaense
personal courage on the part of hundreds and hundreds of young
men out on the trail.
Now, Sir, I hesitate to speak about money because
I find that sums of money that I think are quite big are regarded
by my opponents as trivial. But I think that I should say that
health services as you all know, are costly. Indeed, it is
because you realise that that you have these regular meetings in
order to produce more and more efficacy in the treatment of
disease, because the more efficient, then the more justified is
the expenditure of money. Now, since 1953, that's ten years ago,
the health services in these countries have cost us œ C33M. I had
forgotten to add up the figures. All I remembered in a hazy way
was that my colleague and friend, Mr. Hasluck who is the Minister
for Territories in my Government has a very Leguiling way of
getting more money for the Territories than the rest of us at
first thought proper and, looking back on it, there it is œ P33M.
In the last financial year which closed only the other day,
on health services that amounts to 501-per head of the population,
and to all that you must add in these Territories, the
immense work, the devoted skilled work of mission medical workers,
. So that you will see, just at a glance, that what
has been done here has really been done generously, enthusiastically,
and of course, when I say that, I am the first one to realise that
what looks like a big figure this year will look like a fairly
small and comfortable one before we are another five years older,
If you add together the work of the Administration
here and the work of the missions and this is the last fact
I want to put before you if you add those two together, and
you have in mind that after this last war there were two hospitals
loft standing a mere handful of medical people immediately
available, and then listen when I tell you that in June of this
year there were 100 Government hospitals 100 and a very large
number which I don't have by me of mission hospitals, there were
5' 28 maternity and child welfare centres, there were 1 693 aid
posts or medical centres 1,693 there were 148 doc~ ors and
there were 41., 400 other medical personnel all this on June
1963 and you will see that you have come here representing all
your talent, devotion, experience to a country which affords a
splendid example of an Administration with the co-operation of
the people, going forward along the lines that you have been so
much concerned with, bringing to the people a new chance of
prolonged life, higher medical standards, better living, a better
future, taking them out of the primitive and superstitious a 0 0 0
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darkness before the medical era and giving them the benefit
of the best that the world can provide. This in other
words, is a great experimental area in the world and I am
delighted that you should have come here in order to bring
your minds together on a disease well known in these
Territories so that the sum of knowledge may be added to,
so that the enthusiasm of those on the spot here will be
refreshed, so that our determination to go forward may be
made stronger and it is in that spirit and having in mind
all these things that I welcome you on behalf of the Government
of Australia and I have pleasure in declaring your Conference
open. I