Leader Stirling

rdf:langString Leader Stirling

rdf:langString Leader Stirling

rdf:langString Leader Stirling

rdf:langString Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

rdf:langString England

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rdf:langString #ACE1AF

rdf:langString English, Tanzanian

rdf:langString Education Program:University of Pennsylvania/HSOC 59 Medical Missionaries and Community Partners

rdf:langString English

rdf:langString doctor, surgeon, medical missionary

rdf:langString "While the health services of this country are so meagre – and meagre is, I may say, a polite word – we should be ashamed to cut one cent from the medical estimates, police or no police. I said our services are meagre. What comfort, Sir, is a fine Hospital Dar es Salaam to the people who are dying out in the bush, twenty, thirty, forty, even fifty and more miles from the nearest doctor? Of course they don't all die. I remember one man who crawled on hands and knees into a hospital with only one foot: he said the other foot had dropped off in the road …… I remember a boy with a broken thigh-bone, carried doubled up in a piece of sacking, without even a splint, suspended on a pole, 50 miles to the nearest hospital. Sir, I could go on like this all day, but I would rather spare the House. But let no-one begin to think that we have reached a point where we can cut one cent in reduction of our health services. I would remind the House, Sir, of ….. things that are so common they have become taken for granted. Malnutrition – a nasty word, ——— Parasitic diseases, ——— In many areas the incidence of hookworm infestation is between 50 and 100 per cent of the population. The same is true of bilharzia —— These are the great debilitating, energy-sapping, initiative killing diseases —— As for malaria, the conditions in the greater part of our country are such that the indigenous population simply cannot live without it ——— and tuberculosis in the present condition of the country is a killing disease. The Health Estimates mean life and death in this country; they must not be reduced!"

rdf:langString "How on earth had I got there, and what happened to the obscure missionary doctor? Well, even if he had unavoidably become a little less obscure, he was still doctoring and still a missionary; in fact it was his activities as a missionary doctor that had landed him in this quite unexpected situation. If you have been doctoring in an area for twenty years and more, you are bound to come to share your patients' interests, to understand their troubles, and to join hands in trying to overcome their difficulties."

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rdf:langString —Leader Stirling, speech during his first parliamentary years

rdf:langString —Leader Stirling

rdf:langString Leader Dominic Stirling (19 January 1906 – 7 February 2003) was an English missionary surgeon and former Health Minister in Tanzania. Born in Finchley, England and raised in Sussex Weald, Stirling attended Bishop's Stortford College and the University of London. After a brief period of general practice, Stirling joined the Universities' Mission to Central Africa and was deployed to Tanzania. He spent 14 years of service to the UMCA in . He then converted to Catholicism and joined the Benedictine Mission, working with them in , where he built another hospital. After 15 years he left to , on the slopes of the Kilimanjaro, where he worked for 5 more years. During his medical missionary career, he emphasised the training of local nurses, establishing a precedent for official nurse recognition in Tanzania. His experience in Africa eventually led him to the political career, and in 1958 Leader Stirling was elected (unopposed) to the first Parliament of Tanzania. He held this position for the next 22 years, being the last 5 as Health Minister by appointment of Julius Nyerere. Besides his medical and political work, Stirling was also interested in Scouting. His successful efforts to establish a Scout movement in Tanzania eventually led him to the post of Chief Scout of Tanzania in 1962, following the formation of the Republic.