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Office of the Chief Medical Officer,
Port Moresby, 22nd., August 1914.
Your Excellency,
The following reasons occur to me against the establishment of a base for sick and wounded at Port Moresby.
1. The military have their equipment and personnel requisite to their establishment in peace and war.
2. Institutions such as certain hospitals, and certain voluntary aid Societies, e.g. British Red Cross Society, are registered as part of the war establishment of troops, and are equipped accordingly. This does not apply to us who are supplied with bare necessities for the needs of the Territory.
3. We are to a certain degree isolated in normal circumstances. Were a state of war to arise we might be completely isolated. We must possess medical supplies sufficient to deal with the average disease incidence of the civil community whose care must be our primary consideration.
4. At present we have to exercise considerable thrift in granting medical supplies to our own civil stations in the Territory.
5. Through the willing co-operation of the local citizens we have established a small organization from a scanty supply of men and material sufficient to deal with probable casualties amongst the local Armed Constabulary. Such casualties would probably absorb all our resources.
6. The same remarks apply to our water and provisions.
7. The climate is far from ideal for a base hospital, but this remark may well refer to any site in New Guinea or adjacent archipelago.
8. Any disease imported would be most difficult to eradicate amongst the natives and even Europeans where sanitary arrangements are necessarily primitive.
I have etc.,
Sgd. D. Buchanan,
C.M.O.