Dr Geoffrey Alan DOUGLAS     Oriel 1964

 

Geoff was born in London in 1945, shortly after the end of the second world war.  At the age of 6 his parents emigrated to Kitwe on the Copper Belt in the then Northern Rhodesia, now Zambia. This started his lifelong love of Africa.

 

He was sent aged 10 to a very strict Catholic School in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia (St Georges College in what is today Harare), where he excelled academically and was accepted to read at Oxford at age 16.  However, the influence of the school was strong and ended in a brief sojourn at the Catholic Seminary in Pretoria.  Fortunately, he wisely reconsidered and took up his place at Oriel.

 

During his time at Oriel, he fell madly in love with a young Physiotherapist, Penny who had just taken up a post at the Radcliffe Infirmary. He proposed after 2 weeks and their long marriage and work together in Africa, was proof that love endures.

 

Their daughter Emma was born in Oxford and after qualifying in 1970, Geoff was anxious to return to Lusaka, Zambia to be with his family.  His intern year was at the emerging Lusaka Teaching Hospital and where his first son Giles was born.  With a growing family, Geoff needed better working conditions and was appointed Medical officer at Nkana Copper Mines in Mufulira, Zambia for 2 years. Their second son Ashley was born there in 1973.

 

Undaunted by the challenges facing healthcare in Africa, Geoff had started to conceptualise an idea of how to deliver affordable health care of a high standard in a developing country. He shunned private practice but also realized that Government could not afford to fund more than Primary care. The next few years were pivotable in his grasp, not only of personal clinical development and excellence but also the importance of sound healthcare systems. This he pursued for the rest of his professional life with great passion.

 

In 1974 Geoff was interviewed by Lord Kearton after a scathing report that appeared in the Guardian on 10 May 1973.  The article concerned the Commons Select Committee inquiring into the treatment of African workers by British companies in Southern Africa, and given Geoff operated in Africa his insights were valuable in addressing the problems.  The Commonwealth Development Corporation was involved in many companies in Swaziland and recruited Geoff to work in Swaziland at a Pulp Paper Mill during which time he collated material for his MSc in Occupational medicine.

 

In 1977 he, Penny and the 3 children relocated to London for a year where he achieved his goal of becoming a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians.  At the same time he was awarded an MSc in Occupational Medicine from the London School of Tropical medicine and a Diploma in Industrial Health.

His MSc describes and assesses how larger industrial medical departments tackle health problems in a developing country, based on his experiences in Swaziland.   He made the case for the development of Occupational health services along the lines of a Health Maintenance Organisation (HMO) as pioneered by Kaiser Permanente in the USA.

 

Now armed with academic excellence his pioneering spirit leapt to the fore.  With the support of the Matsapa Industrial Board, he returned to Swaziland in 1979 and developed a purpose built clinic which was constructed on the industrial estate to pioneer Occupational Medical Care. Penny was recruited as the Physiotherapist, one nurse and a cleaner - Occupational Health Services was launched.

 

It was tough as all the family’s finances had been used to fund his FRCP studies in London.  A home had to be found for the family in a country where there was scant housing. In the end a small mango farm became the family home for 25 years.

 

Pioneering healthcare in Africa is not for the feint hearted and much had to be done. On top of an emergent  clinical system was the realisation of no awareness, in an industrial setting, of the importance of First Aid training. Neither the Swaziland Army or the Police had any First Aid training and there was no ambulance brigade.  Geoff persuaded St John Ambulance to come to start training Swazi workers. This was not easy work either but Geoff held firm.  He was eventually Knighted by the Order of St John for his pioneering work in Swaziland.

 

Penny was struggling to develop Physiotherapy and threw herself into Rehabilitation of industrial injuries.  She formed a committee to develop a Cheshire Home for the many stroke victims, spinal injuries and children with birth defects such as cerebral palsy.  Young Mothers were crucial to the work force in the lighter industrial factories. The clinic supported the development of creche facilities. OHS worked alongside the NGO Family Life Organisation to teach breast feeding, nutrition, family planning and immunization, all crucial for the health of these young women.

 

Swaziland, a British protectorate, was a haven of peace and good integration, not contaminated by colonialism or the issues of Apartheid in neighbouring South Africa.   The 1980’s was the peak of  violence and atrocities in Southern Africa as  the  resistance organised by the African National Congress, fought the Apartheid government, and the Swazi people gave refuge to political activists.  In 1983, when Geoff was only 36, the family had to come to terms with the attempted murder of Geoff after he was shot by a hitchhiker from Mozambique.  The injuries were life -threatening but he was saved by Missionary Surgeons at the local Mission Hospital, the Nazerene. 

 

The clinic had to survive without him for almost a year. Recruitment of Doctors was not easy but several came as locums. Penny had to find the strength to continue running her Department, the farm and 3 lively children.  Geoff survived this trauma and continued to keep the clinical system with all its side shoots going.

 

In 1986 he diagnosed the first HIV case in Swaziland and was alerted to the great need to educate the Swazi people about the impending pandemic. The Swazi culture accepted polygamy and this survives to this day.  Swazi men in particular embraced multiple sexual partners as a way to demonstrate power and virility. The Clinic as an NGO received funding from the Marie Stopes Charity to run a national AIDS education programme targeting men called “Man Talk”.  The approach used  social marketing to create awareness amongst young Swazi men about the prevention of sexual transmitted diseases in particular HIV. It proved very successful, but Geoff was disappointed that funding was stopped after 2 years.

 

More tragedy was to come.  In 1991 their youngest son, Ashley died suddenly in a car accident aged 17.  Geoff & Penny never really recovered from this loss.  Geoff threw himself into working on further systems from the emerging internet revolution. He realised that efficient healthcare, both for patient and health professionals, could ably be assisted by accountable data systems that tracked patient records and costs.   The loss of their son, overwhelmed them both and with the surviving children now away, and a return to England was planned in 2000. This was a major adjustment for them both as the continued to run the clinic remotely and began working for the NHS. They finally said goodbye to Swaziland in 2006.

 

In his last years Geoff was engaged to pioneer another NGO to create awareness about the power of good nutrition and the challenges of modern food processing on diets, targeting health professionals in particular. This involved much research into what constitutes good nutrition. Health Empowerment Through Nutrition was launched  and Geoff was able to utilise his communication skills in lectures both in Europe and South Africa, creating movies and awakening his professional bodies about the healing nature of food.

 

Geoff had a rich and fulfilling life but both tragedy and ill health took away his energy in the last few years during Covid.  His enquiring mind was no doubt was ably stimulated by his 7 years at his Alma Mater – Oxford University, which provided the platform for his service to healthcare in Africa.