Leader Stirling

Leader Dominic Stirling (19 January 1906 – 7 February 2003)"Leader Stirling", "Times Online", 8 April 2003, accessed 15 December 2010 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 Lulindi. He then converted to Catholicism and joined the Benedictine Mission, working with them in Mnero, where he built another hospital. After 15 years he left to Kibosho, 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,Stirling, Leader. "Africa: My Surgery". Churchman Publishing: Worthing and Folkestone, 1987. being the last 5 as Health Minister by appointment of Julius Nyerere.Stirling, Leader. "Tanzanian Doctor". McGill-Queen's University Press, Montreal, 1977. 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.

Early life: 1906–1929

Leader Stirling was born in England in 1906, the first of 4 siblings. His was of a family of ancient Scots and also of doctors, including his uncle Harold Leader, who was a children's physician, his great-uncles Henry Pye-Smith and Rutherford Pye-Smith, and the cousins Charles Pye-Smith, a surgeon, and Jack Pye-Smith, all Physicians of the Guy's Hospital. He was also cousin of David Stirling founder of the Special Air Service. The surgical talent seemed to have blossomed in him at early age, when, in 1911, Stirling surprised his mother after she saw him sewing a ripped teddy bear. Although having encouragement by his family and even a natural curiosity, the choice for the medical career was only taken in his last year at the Bishop's Stortford College, where his Headmaster received the news as a "startling new development". Decided, he applied for scholarships on Oxford and Cambridge but was not accepted. He then joined the University of London in 1924 and chose the London Hospital as his medical school. He borrowed £1,000 from his father to pay his studies, money he was later able to pay back."Plarr's Lives of the Fellows Online", 26 October 2005, accessed 14 December 2013

Medical training: 1924–1929

The 5 year medical course consisted of 1 year of pre-medical studies at the East London College, now Queen Mary College, where he basically studied zoology. During his first year he was also a surgical dresser in the London Hospital when he had his first hands-on experiences with medical practice. In 1925 he began his second year of medical school, now studying at the London Hospital, which was followed by 3 years of clinical course. He graduated from medical school in July 1929, qualifying MRCS and LRCT in the same year.Stirling, Leader. "Heroes of the Faith in Tanzania; Seven witnesses from the Central African Mission". Benedictine Publications Ndanda-Peramiho, 1997. He graduated MBBS, and later, in 1993, was elected FRCS, a very honourable and rare happening.

Early career: 1929–1935

Dr. Leader Stirling's first job was as a Clinical Assistant in the Children's Out Patient Department at the London Hospital. After 3 months he got another position as a Clinical Assistant to Surgical Out-patients at that same institution for 3 more months, when he finally got a Resident Appointment at the London Hospital, as a House-Surgeon to the sixth Assistant Surgeon, Sir Hugh Cairns. While working for Dr. Cairns, he met with Dr. Harvey Cushing, an experience he describes as "one of the great moments of my life".

After his House-Surgeon job, Stirling took a ten days locum in a 1000-bed mental hospital, his first experience with the field. He would later help develop the first national mental health service in Tanzania. He then continued his work at the London Hospital as a Receiving Room Officer, then House Physician, and ultimately Resident Accoucheur, the most senior resident appointment. He deemed himself "very, very lucky" for he got all the House Appointments he wanted and, hence, completed 3,5 years of his early career as a junior staff at the London Hospital.

In 1933 Leader Stirling left the London Hospital to work in a private practice in South London as a surgeon. He then worked as Outpatient Surgical Officer at a nearby hospital from his private practice for a brief time, when he finally decided to "continue the upward climb on the ladder of specialization". He applied for Medical Officer to the General Post Office, Resident Medical Officer to Hertford Hospital and Deputy Medical Superintendent to Sunderland Infirmary. He got interviews for all of those positions but was undecided. It was 14 January 1935, when Leader Stirling received a letter from the Universities' Mission to Central Africa (UMCA), asking, "A doctor is urgently needed at Masasi. Can you come?" calling him to do Missionary Work in Africa. This he describes as the event when he "kicked away the ladder" (of specialisation).

Missionary career: 1935–1969

Arrival in Africa

3 months after his decision to join the UMCA, Leader Stirling landed in Zanzibar, then the port of entry to Tanganyika. The UMCA mission in Zanzibar had been well established by another notable missionary, Miss Annie Allen, in 1878. He continued to Masasi, where he could be of more use, to join Dr. Frances Taylor, who was covering 10,000 square miles by walking 20–30 miles a day on foot to practice medicine. She was, according to the Bishop of the mission, "perhaps the most over-worked person in the diocese".A.G. Blood "The History of the Universities' Mission to Central Africa; Vol. III 1933–1957". The Universities Mission to Central Africa, London, 1962. His arrival was met with great enthusiasm by the mission: "the most joyful thing that has happened medically for a very long time".

The Masasi Mission Hospital was "in a primitive state" according to Dr. Stirling, the structure being a thatched hut of rammed earth with no running water. However, they had a laboratory and an operating theatre, and would treat around 300 patients on a normal day's work. On a year they would have 1,000 new admissions and 5,000 new outpatients.

Dr. Frances Taylor and Dr. Leader Stirling then divided the area and while the first would be based in Masasi, Stirling would relocate to Lulindi.

Lulindi: 1935–1949

Lulindi was then a very isolated African village with the nearest Post-Office being 24 miles away and with no proper medical infrastructure. Leader Stirling would live here in the next 14 years, from 1935–1949. In that time he built the Lulindi Hospital and the Newala Hospital, being the sole doctor in these two and also the Luatala hospital. He also built numerous Dispensaries, a Nursing School and started a Scouting group.

Lulindi Hospital

The building of the 80 bed hospital took 3 years to complete. This hospital was in memorial to the late Dr. Culver James, whose legacy provided much of the funds. Dr. Stirling was intimately involved in this development, since he drew the scale-plans, selected a site, marked the foundations, employed brick makers, brick carriers, brick burners and bricklayers, and cut suitable trees into planks. He then had the help of the mission carpenter in making windows and doors and local masons on trimming stone for foundations and floors. For this project he also had the assistance of his uncle, a civil engineer, and his brother-in-law, a military engineer who corresponded with him from England. Besides the more technical chores, Leader Stirling also had a "small manual component" in the building of the hospital, completed in 1938. Since the initial installations were not enough, in 1946 Leader Stirling added four new wards, store-rooms and nurses' and dressers' rooms, "completing his plan for the main block, including the hospital chapel.".

The Lulindi Hospital facilities in 1946 included a surgical theatre, an outpatient department, a maternity block, a laboratory, a pharmacy, patient wards, store-rooms, nurses' and dressers' rooms, a hospital chapel, an x-ray machine and a built-in wood stove for sterilisation.

Newala Hospital

Simultaneously with the construction of the Lulindi Hospital, he also designed and built the Newala Hospital. For this he had the help of Sister Anne, who supervised the construction of the 50 bed building. Built in one of the highest populated areas of Tanzania, the hospital began to receive 300 patients daily, increasing to 400 and later more than 500.

Dispensaries

Leader Stirling also established and maintained a chain of 20 dispensaries to fill the lack of medical infrastructure in the region comprehending "almost to the coast and right down to the Mozambique border, the furthest a hundred miles from Lulindi".

Visits to Nairobi

Leader Stirling was also invited two times to visit the capital of Kenya, Nairobi. In his first visit in 1940 he was invited to discuss the brink of an epidemic of malaria, brought by troops during World War II and unknown to Nairobi until then given it sits 5,500 feet above ocean level. Soldiers sent to Addis Ababa also brought back home syphilis.

He was then summoned in 1942 by a friend to help with a plague epidemic.

Mnero: 1949–1964

14 years after his arrival in Lulindi Stirling converted to Catholicism and had to leave the UMCA. Leader Stirling learned the Catholic faith at age ten, which he considered his true faith, but joined the Church of England as a student due to influence of friends. However, after some time in Africa he became convinced that locals should hear "the faith once delivered to the Saints", and not a European reformed faith. After hearing his formal request for reunion of the Churches was ignored by the 1948 Lambeth Conference, he and 5 more missionaries left the UMCA. A.G. Blood, however, only mentions the departure of 3 missionaries at that time, writing that Dr. Leader Stirling and Fr. Birch left the Anglican Church following Canon Denniss, the Priest-in-charge in 1949: "all three had given good service but had become unsettled by events in the Church outside the diocese.".

Leader Stirling's departure was reckoned by the UMCA as "'a very great loss to the medical work of the diocese; but we owe him many thanks for his fourteen years of work with us.' And not only for his medical work, for he had also done a great deal of building and done very much to strengthen and establish over a wide area the Scout movement which was providing itself an asset of ever-increasing value in the diocese.".

Stirling joins the Benedictine Mission and is sent to found a new hospital in Mnero; Mnero Diocesan Hospital. The hospital was founded in the early 1950’s, next to the Benedictine Mission of Mnero. The mission itself was built in 1914, and was one of the earliest places of Benedictine missionary activities in (the former) Southern Tanganyika. This time, though, he has the help of an architect builder from the mission. This meant he could dedicate himself more to the medical work which, in 1958, he describes as follows

The first Medical Director of Mnero Hospital, Dr. Leader Stirling, led the construction of the hospital. Thereafter, Dr. Stirling worked for 14 years in the hospital

Besides the Hospital, Leader Stirling also built a male Nurse School, started yet another Scouting group and starts his political career.