Helping Others

In the words of Lewis Carroll, ‘One of the deep secrets of life is that all that is really worth doing is what we do for others.’ Helping those near and far is a very common thread among OMs. Anthony Burns-Cox (C2 1957-62) on his brother Christopher (C2 1952-55).

Christopher Burns-Cox – North Borneo

Every year the Club hears about the amazing, and sometimes unimaginable, work selflessly done for the greater good. This year, the Club is launching an OM of the Year Award that will recognise an OM who has gone above and beyond in the previous 12 months. In recognition of this, I have written about my brother Christopher and the incredible work he did throughout his life. One of Christopher’s close friends wrote recently, ‘He achieved so much in helping others; he never strayed from his childhood determination to do so’.

Would you give a kidney to a stranger? Well, that is what Christopher did in 2010, at the age of 72. ‘I’m not the first person to give a kidney to a stranger, but it seemed to me that this is a possibility, that it’s available, and that kidneys are very badly needed. I had been a doctor for 50 years and was aware how enormously fortunate I had been in my own good health. I just came to the conclusion that I didn’t need two kidneys.’ He never knew who received his kidney, and insisted that he didn’t want to know, unless the knowledge would help the recipient. He was instrumental in setting up the charity ‘Give a Kidney – one’s enough’ which supplies information and gives encouragement to anyone interested in donating. NHS Blood and Transplant has now incorporated altruistic donation into its national strategy and, in 2019, donations exceeded 100 for the first time.

Whilst at Marlborough, and by the time of O levels, Christopher had decided that he wanted to become a doctor. He was

inspired by re-reading Life of General Gordon, whose work to help families and young boys in great poverty in Gravesend appealed to him and made him want to do something similar. His other medical inspiration was On the Edge of the Primeval Forest by Albert Schweitzer. Christopher’s view was that if Schweitzer held trying to heal the sick to be more important than all the other lives he could have lived, then it must indeed be a wonderful thing to do. Following A levels, Christopher wrote to the Middlesex Hospital asking to visit and subsequently applied for a place there to study medicine. He recalled his accommodation in London had no heating but did have a very large colony of bed bugs that came out of the cracks in the walls and the bed in the middle of the night. Despite putting elastic bands around the wrists of his pyjamas and wearing a scarf in bed he usually had red, very itchy bites to scratch during lectures! Such was the life of a student doctor.

Dr Cicely Williams, whose numerous achievements included setting up a network of village health centres in the sultanate of Trengganu, north-east Malaya, was an early role model for Christopher. As a young doctor, hoping to emulate her success, he moved to the Crown Colony of North Borneo as Colonial Medical Officer with his wife, Pat, and young son Simon. He soon established himself in the hospital in Beaufort where there were two general wards with a simple X-ray department. When they needed to take an X-ray, they would shout across to the cook to turn off the rice boiler so that there was adequate current to take the picture. Medically, as usual, Christopher had certain passions including setting up a family planning clinic. The local population was largely of Muslim faith and so the first thing he did was to write to the Chief Mufti in Cairo to establish that the contraceptive pill was not contrary to the teachings of Islam. Using his own money, he bought a box of contraceptive pills from Singapore that were subsequently distributed to the local women. It is highly likely that this was the first contraceptive clinic in the government service. During his tenure, North Borneo became part of Malaysia, and he continued to work for the new regime. He realised that there was a very valuable group in the health service known as Rural Health Nurses. These women undertook a two-year training course before returning to their villages. Much of their work was in maternity and child welfare but there was competition in the area from the traditional birth attendants known as bidan kampong who had no formal training and little concept of sterility. To encourage closer relations with the Rural Health Nurses, Christopher, with other staff, ran a five-day course for the traditional birth attendants in matters to do with babies and birth and gave them all a certificate to put on the walls of their houses. Respect flourished between the government nurses and the bidan kampong and many years later, the World Health Organisation (WHO) began to promote the idea of formal training for traditional birth attendants.

1971 saw Christopher appointed to a new post as consultant physician at Frenchay Hospital (and its smaller attached hospital at Cossham), where he continued to work until his retirement. At the time, all posts had to include the offer to do part-time work to allow doctors to spend time in private practice, but he was never interested in private medicine. His ambition remained to try to contribute to the National Health Service as much as he could because of his fervent belief in it as the greatest social experiment in the history of mankind. In an effort to raise funds for the League of Friends at the hospital, Christopher came up with the idea of raising the Union Jack on Cossham Hospital flagpole for a donation of £5 per day, allowing people to nominate an event or a person to be remembered on that day. This raised an annual sum of £200, but, unfortunately, incurred the wrath of a member of the public, who wrote to him stating that the Union Jack could only be flown from public buildings on certain days of the year. Undaunted, Christopher wrote to The Queen and asked her permission to continue with his fundraising efforts. The reply came back that they could fly the flag unofficially whenever they wanted. On display in the Edward Jenner Museum in Berkeley, Gloucestershire, is the Order of the Bifurcated Needle awarded to Christopher in 1974 for his work in the smallpox eradication campaign in Bangladesh, where he acted as a consultant to the WHO. The award was created by Donald A Henderson, the mastermind behind the WHO’s smallpox eradication campaign, to recognise the efforts of his leading vaccinators. On one occasion, Christopher gave a vivid account of chasing individuals from the local community in Bangladesh with his bifurcated needle as they swam across rivers and climbed trees to avoid vaccination. Not surprisingly, he was undeterred! Writing at the time, Christopher said that he ‘felt proud to be a part, be it a tiny one, of the Bangladesh government and the WHO [eradication] programme’. Although he always described himself as just a man doing a job, his work contributed to the eradication of smallpox with countless lives saved.

Christopher’s support for human rights in Palestine was one of his greatest passions. In 2009, he was one of three British medics who began a hunger strike in Egypt to protest at being refused entry into Gaza for a humanitarian mission. Their aim was to establish a cardiac surgery unit at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, which at the time had no such facility, and to help train medical students and junior doctors. However, the British medics were denied access to the Palestinian territory at the Rafah Crossing. Resolutely, he regularly returned to this region to examine medical students, including at the Islamic University of Gaza, and with the support of the Al Quds Foundation for Medical Schools in Palestine. Christopher was certainly well informed about Middle Eastern politics and would engage anyone who cared to join him in heated debate, even though his views were not always to everyone’s taste! ‘All adventures have disadvantages as well as advantages, but if you believe in something, go for it. Try to leave some improvements behind, even if very small.’ Christopher Burns-Cox (1937-2018).

‘Christopher gave a vivid account of chasing individuals from the local community in Bangladesh with his bifurcated needle as they swam across rivers and climbed trees to avoid vaccination.’