Contradictions and Complexities in an Indigenous Medical Service

New awareness of needs and opportunities led to an expansion of medical work in South Pacific territories during the inter-war period. The Rockefeller Foundation's Pacific-based representative Dr Sylvester Lambert perceived an indigenous intermediary medical corps as critical to establishing an economical, appropriate health service, one that would encourage Islanders to accept modern medicine. He focused regional interest in a Central Medical School, which opened in Suva in 1929 to provide a professional four-year course in western medical science for students from the British and New Zealand dependencies. The programme expressed colonial attitudes about indigenous ability and attempted to negotiate proper relations between ‘traditional’ and ‘europeanised’ behaviour. The tensions and complex expectations inherent in the Native Medical Practitioner (NMP) role are graphically demonstrated in the experiences of Fijian NMP Mesulame Taveta, a volunteer to the politically fraught Anglo-French New Hebrides Condominium, 1932–35.