In the Western Australian Truth, THE PEOPLE’S PAPER Saturday July 5, 1924
Panic Conditions in Derby
Lepers Mingling With Townsfolk and Spreading the Disease
From the far North comes a cry which so far seems to have failed to impress itself upon metropolitan ears. Things seem to be in a parlous state at Derby and up to the present little seems to have been done to alleviate them. The neglected North is indeed neglected when it is claimed to be rotting with leprosy and venereal disease, and no one holds out a helping hand to succour it in its need.
All through the ages leprosy has been looked upon with particular horror and Biblical lepers were always outcasts and objects of loathing. Right up to modern times leprosy has been regarded as something more than ordinary loathsome, which called for strict isolation and preservation from public eye or contact.
As a rule leper stations are placed well away from the centres of civilisation, and no clean person is allowed to go freely into them. And if a clean person does get in he stands a big chance of not being allowed to go absolutely free out again.
But in Westralia’s leper station at Derby, things are different. The Westralian health authorities have queer ideas about leprosy. The principal medical officer has an idea that leprosy is something not to be feared. It is something for healthy people to play round with – or at least, allow to pay round them, quite an inoffensive, gambolling happy little sort of disease germ. He says, ‘The disease seems to be of low infectivity,’ and denies ever having said that it is not contagious.
But other doctors have their opinion also. Some say emphatically that it is contagious and infectious, both. The opinions of the latter appear to be borne out by the manner in which all other countries treat their lepers. They treat them to the strictest possible isolation. Our principal medical officer has one known station only to back up his opinion, and that is the station at Derby run by the department to which he is advisor.
Even at Wooroloo they consider leprosy a case for special isolation, special attention and special treatment.
The position is such at Derby that the inhabitants are in a state of alarm amounting almost to panic. The local Road Board and Health Board are speaking of resignation in a body if something is not done as a result of their efforts for years past.
They say that the leper station must go. They are not satisfied to take the medical officer’s opinion, or to take any risk of becoming lepers, against the confirmed opinion of the rest of the world.
The isolation camp is alleged to be an absolute farce. It is about as isolated, in effect, as the clock under the Perth railway station on a Saturday night. Aboriginals are freely employed in Derby as houseboys and helps. An aboriginal recently convicted of ‘being unlawfully on the quarantine area,’ stated that it was common for natives from outside to visit their leper friends in the hospital.
Presumably after the visit they returned to their jobs of cooking and washing and general attention to the houses of their white masters. As a result a local medico is stated to have recently been given a nasty shock when his houseboy developed leprosy in a bad form, and he is prepared to say that the boy got it by contagion. His boy is not the only one who has contracted it apparently in the same manner.
The ‘isolation hospital’ itself is a farce. No guard is kept on the inmates, who are housed in an ant-eaten and broken down shanty a hundred yards from the general hospital. Far from being isolated, the lepers go frequently on fishing and hunting trips. The fence being only of wire, they are able to go out whenever they feel like it.
Recently the local health officer was awakened to the necessity of an examination of all local natives by a further outbreak of leprosy. That examination was carried out in the operating theatre of the new hospital, and an operating theatre is usually regarded by careful and scientific medicos as a place to be especially kept free of all germs. A few days later, it is alleged, a white man who had been in hospital for some time developed leprosy.
In April last year the health Board removed several lepers from Broome to Derby, because it was demanded by Broome residents. This in the face of the chief medical officer’s assertion that leprosy is of low infectivity. Derby protested at the imposition, but, if it was thought that leprosy was contagious in Broome, it was not thought to be contagious in Derby, evidently, for the protest was of no avail. Derby got the lepers. And every week it is getting more of the home-grown variety.
For a considerable time Derby has been endeavouring to get the horror shifted from its midst, and is not inclined to be consoled into believing that everything is all right – despite the fact that Derby has evidence that leprosy is spreading among the natives and apparently attacking the whites.
According to the Broome ‘Echo’, the Derby Road Board has asked the authorities to put the following questions to the principal medical officer in view (of) his opinion on the leprosy trouble: “Why was it necessary to accede to the demands of the Broome residents to have the diseased natives removed from Broome? Why was it necessary to go to the large expense of hiring a lugger to bring the natives to Derby? Why was the local doctor instructed to be sure and have the lugger fumigated after the lepers had been landed? Why is it necessary to isolate the diseased natives here? Why is it necessary to go to the expense of isolating the case of leprosy at the Wooroloo Sanatorium and pay for a special attendant, who is supposed to be in quarantine always?”
The answers to these puzzles have not been forthcoming up to the present, but a prompt reply that they would be looked into was received.
That, and the matter of venereal disease which is rampant among the natives, and is equally as casually controlled, should be looked into very thoroughly. If it is a matter which cannot be neglected any longer, (and) Premier Collier should devote his earnest attention to it. It would be too Mitchellism to let the matter drop.