European Refugee Doctors in TPNG

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In 1964, at a village hospital in central Buka Island, Territory of Papua New Guinea (TPNG), a violent confrontation occurred between a village councillor and a European doctor who had recently been stationed there by the territory’s health administration. The councillor, armed with a loaded shotgun that he was legally entitled to hold, had been alerted by villagers that the doctor had just physically abused his 16-year old daughter. While villagers restrained the irate councillor, the parish priest was informed of the incident, and together with the village patrol officer (“kiap” in PNG Pidgin), this dangerous situation was resolved by having the doctor immediately transferred out of the village. 

The circumstances leading to this confrontation involved the doctor conducting “clinics” at the village hospital whereby unchaperoned girls aged 6-16 were required to stand alone and naked in front of the doctor while he examined their breasts and genitals. When the councillor’s daughter refused to remove her clothes to allow this examination, the doctor slapped her face, precipitating the ensuing drama. Following the expulsion of the European doctor from the village, stories emerged of him using a scalpel to remove skin growths from villagers, without the prior application of local anaesthetic to dull the pain. 

How such an incident could have occurred in pre-independence TPNG under the control of the Australian administration can be attributed to a policy instigated by the Director of Public Health, Dr (later Sir) John Thomson Gunther, soon after taking up this post in 1946. The Australian Dictionary of Biography (ADB) states, “Gunther’s main problems were recruiting trained personnel, carrying services to remote communities and protecting the many recently contacted communities from new diseases. By employing refugee doctors from Europe, and by training expatriate and indigenous medical assistants, Gunther built up the staff”.  The ADB further states, “Permitting briefly trained staff to treat patients, and by-passing other safeguards observed in advanced countries involved risks, but Gunther argued that overall the policies had saved thousands”. 

This “The end justifies the means” notion in relation to Gunther’s public health policies appears to have received solid support from the highest levels of the TPNG Administration. In her 1981 book, “Pathways to Independence”, Dame Rachel Cleland, wife of the TPNG Administrator, Sir Donald Cleland, a contemporary and friend of Gunther, states, “…John Gunther..had foresight and the practical originality to seize on whatever was at hand in human and material resources, and make the fullest possible use of them. To overcome a shortage of doctors he looked among the ‘displaced persons’ and recruited medical men from Europe, who were not allowed to practise in Australia. These doctors went to the remotest places and laid the foundations of the health service”. 

While many of the “medical men from Europe” recruited by Gunther undoubtedly behaved ethically and professionally while working in the TPNG Health Service, this is of no comfort to the young village women who were unethically treated on Buka Island in 1964, or to those like them in other TPNG villages while Gunther’s recruitment policies were in force.