[Patients and doctors in Greenland--70 years ago and today]

In April 1924 a 13 year old Greenlander died of tuberculosis in the hospital in Egedesminde. The boy had been transported on dog sled by the district doctor from the outpost Ikamiut two months earlier. Not because healing was considered possible, but because the conditions for nursing in his family's turf hut was too bad. The crowded living conditions in Greenland and the frequent hunger periods were the reason for the spread of TB, which in the nineteen twenties was the cause of 1/3 of all deaths. At the present moment it is psychiatric patients who take up most beds in the Greenlandic hospitals. The reason for so many patients with behaviour disorder is still--among other things--due to crowded living conditions but also to the sudden change in recent years of the way of living. The doctors living and working conditions in Greenland in 1924 were very different from conditions in Denmark which made it difficult to fill the vacancies. Nowadays doctors salaries are on the same level in Greenland and in Denmark, but a period in a Greenlandic hospital does not count very much for a doctor's special training, and when schools for children are not as good as in Denmark it is still difficult to get Danish doctors to stay in Greenland for a long time.