N.Z. Gynaecologist In Ethiopia ‘Working Miracles’

Press, Volume C, Issue 29511, 12 May 1961, Page 15

N.Z. Gynaecologist In Ethiopia ‘Working Miracles’

A New Zealander, Dr. R. H. J. Hamlin, and his wife, Dr. Catherine Hamlin, both gynaecologists, are “working miracles” in the Princess Tsahai Hospital, Addis Ababa, says the president of the British Medical Association (Sir Douglas Robb), who visited the hospital a few months ago. He describes the Hamlins’ efforts in a letter to “The Press.” Dr. Hamlin and his wife “beg and borrow money” for their work, and often pay out of their own pockets, says Sir Douglas Robb. They need an “urgent fund” of £BOO to cover the bare costs of admission of serious gynaecological cases to the hospital, and of the necessary equipment and supplies. The patients often arrive on foot from 100 miles away, destitute. Up to now, the Hamlins have "brought relief to outcasts with no hope otherwise” by curing gynaecological conditions which would otherwise have gone untreated.

The Princess Tsahai Hospital is a British institution with a large Swedish wing. The superintendent is Emerittus Professor J. le F. Burrow, formerly of Leeds University. Besides the Hamlins, there are about five or six British doctors on the staff and as many Swedes, with a few Ethiopians. The hospital was named after an Ethopian princess of the inter-war period who trained as a nurse in the Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital in London with the idea of leading a nursing movement in her own country, but who died soon afterwards. School for Midwives

The intention of the hospital committee in appointing the Hamlins was that they should start a school

for training midwives. "The number of midwives in Ethiopia is equivalent to one midwife for the whole of Birmingham. The need in terms of human suffering is enormous.” Sir Douglas Robb says. To set up a 50-bed midwifery training school, the hospital has opened a £50,000 appeal.

Dr. R. H. J. Hamlin, of Hawke’s Bay, spent several years in Christchurch. After gaining an honours master’s degree he became a lecturer at Canterbury University College, but gave that up to go through the Otago medical School. He graduated in 1942, and returned to Christchurch as a house surgeon in the Christchurch Hospital. He took postgraduate studies which led to membership of the Royal

College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and became medical superintendent successively of the Crown street Women's Hospital in Sydney and the Queen Victoria Maternity Hospital in Sydney. Dr. Hamlin was an obstetrical travelling scholar from the University of Otago and a medical travelling scholar from the University of New Zealand.

He took a post in the medical school at Hong Kong, but had to resign after a year or two because of his wife’s health. Afterwards he was briefly at the post-graduate unit in obstetrics and gynaecology at Auckland. He went to Addis Ababa two years and a half ago. Dr. Catherine Hamlin graduated in Australia, her home country. The organiser of the appeal to help the Hamlins is a personal friend of theirs, Mr N. M. Peryer, of 9 Rossall street. Christchurch.