Leader Stirling

It was with the help of an experienced British nurse, Miss May Bell, that he started a nursing school in Lulindi, which was in later years transferred to Masasi and was still running in 1987, when he published the book. Mrs. Thekla Mchauru was the first woman to complete the course, qualifying in 1940 and becoming a registered nurse, the first Tanganyikan woman to do so. Miss May Bell and Leader Stirling's syllabus, based on the British model, was later adopted by the government and implemented all over the country's nursing schools.

Leader Stirling attended to the International Conference on Primary Health Care in Almaty (former Alma-Ata) from which originated the Alma Ata Declaration. He met with the Minister of Health of the Soviet Union during this event. In 1980, on his last year as a Minister, he chaired the Commonwealth Health Ministers meeting prior to the World Health Assembly in Geneva.

In 1979 he idealised and lobbied for a bill that would regulate and nationalise the small private practice in then socialist Tanzania. The bill met some resistance due to widespread ignorance about its contents. He recounts that when election time came, urban "crypto-capitalists" had financed an effort to secure his defeat. Hence he was, for the first time in 22 years, defeated at a Parliamentary election and went into retirement at age 75.

During his time as parliamentary he would support government funding of Church Mission Hospitals, which were being neglected. When appointed Minister of Health this issue was resolved by unification of the healthcare system bringing together religious and governmental health facilities. In 1978 Tanzania had more than 3,000 dispensaries and approximately 140 hospitals in total, while having around 8,000 villages. Their aim was to have one dispensary in every village. This scheme of rural medical assistance was adopted worldwide. Another measure of public health policy was to unify the Nursing registry, which was separated between home-trained and foreign-trained (mainly England-trained) nurses.

In 1973, following his ever-increasing political involvement, he was placed on a Presidential Commission moved to Dar es Salaam, then capital of the country. This meant the end of his formal medical practice. He would return to the practice of medicine after his retirement at age 75, although informally and sporadically at the request of those who came to him at his house.

For being seen by his peers as someone with "a nose for irregularities and discrepancies", he was involved in several committees and commissions, to the point of being placed in 27 committees simultaneously. In 1973 he was placed on a Presidential Commission and called by the President's Office to live in Dar es Salaam, then capital of the country. His work on this commission was peripatetic and aimed on the retrenchment of public expenditure. He travelled several thousand miles and visited 60 Districts and Regions for irregularities. At that same time he was chairman of the Health Committee of the National Planning Commission and chairman of the Board of the National Food and Nutrition Centre. He was also the chairman of the Special Commission of Inquiry into deaths in the sisal industry, historically a very important industry in Tanzania. He informs that his report on the poor labour conditions brought improvements. Another position he held was chairman of a Commission to investigate the National Provident Fund, early Tanzania's social security program. The commission eventually was made a board of trustees which granted him a permanent chair. After 6 months on this position a new government was formed and he was appointed Minister of Health by President Julius Nyerere in 1975.

Upon the arrival of a new Matron to the hospital in 1964, Leader Stirling was accused of trying to be "forcing the pace of Africanization" in the hospital. The quarrel led to his resignation in that same year.

Soon afterwards he married his first wife Regina Haule, an African nurse, in 1963, while living in Mnero. They moved to Kibosho in 1964 and a year later his mother paid the couple a visit, at the age of 88, her first visit to Africa. Unfortunately his wife died in 1972 of septicaemia when the couple was living in Soni.

Tanganyika gained independence in 1961 and the "Parliament of Freedom" ended its 5-year course in 1965. Leader Stirling had recently moved to Kibosho, where he wasn't popular enough to run and also too distant from Mbeya. His political career might have come to a halt if it wasn't for the fact that the University of Dar es Salaam appointed him to run for a National Seat. He was elected and would keep his Parliamentary seat until 1980 after winning subsequent elections.

Leader Stirling became a Tanzanian citizen following the country's independence, in 1961. This was also required by his Parliamentary position and meant he had to relinquish his British citizenship, for Tanzania did not allow dual nationality.

Leader Stirling first experience with politics was at the age of 18. During a school debate he made a "burlesque political speech" which prompted his schoolmaster to jokingly say that "Stirling will undoubtedly become a politician". He never thought that he would follow that career, though, as his father would say that "politics is a dirty game". However, in 1958, at the age of 52, Stirling made his first public speech in Mnero, being the chairman of this event Julius Nyerere. This meeting was historic, being the opening of the campaign that would lead the Southern Province of Tanganyika to elect its first representative to Parliament.

While his speech was actually to support an Indian colleague running for that district, Leader Stirling was also running for Parliament for the TANU party representing Southern Tanzania. He was elected in 1958, unopposed, but would have to run again in 1960, as one part of the agreement of independence was the formation of a more representative Parliament. Racial quotas were still in place and the District of Mbeya and Chunya was in need of a TANU candidate to represent its whites. Leader Stirling then ran for that district, even though Mbeya was 700 miles away and the roads were in bad condition. He won his second election against a European coffee-farmer in 1960. He would manage both activities as a parliamentary and missionary doctor since his "24 years of single-doctoring" were over at Mnero.

He attended to the great Jubilee Jamboree of Scouting at Sutton Coldfield, England in 1957 with a group of 30 Tanzanians (Tanganyikans and Zanzibaris alike) where he met Queen Elizabeth II.

Stirling joins the Benedictine Mission and is sent to found a new hospital in Mnero; Mnero Diocesian 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 .mw-parser-output .templatequote{overflow:hidden;margin:1em 0;padding:0 40px}.mw-parser-output .templatequote .templatequotecite{line-height:1.5em;text-align:left;padding-left:1.6em;margin-top:0}

At Mnero Leader Stirling also got involved in nurse training. Soon after the Mnero Hospital was built in the early 1950s, the Bishop gave him orders to start a new male nursing school. In 1959 they switched their training to Rural Medical Aids since there was a higher shortage of those professionals and, thus, became one of the only two Rural Medical Aids School in the country along with a governmental one.

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.".

In 1948 he was appointed Commissioner for Training, spending the following 15 years training Scoutmasters for the whole country and in 1952 he ran his first Wood Badge course. Soon after the country's independence he was elected Chief Scout of Tanganyika, in 1962, and held this position for 10 more years.

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.

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

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.

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.".

In 1937 he helped Scout Commissioner George Tibbatts, also an English missionary, to establish the first Scout group in Southern Tanzania. However, since the Commissioner had to return to England after breaking his leg and this group was based 20 miles away, Leader Stirling discontinued the group. It was only in 1939 when Stirling was able to found his first Rover Scouts crew, based in Lulindi. After the success of this group he was invited to open another one in Luatala and with the growing interest in scouting in the region he eventually had to organise an informal Scoutmastership training event so as to train enough Scout Masters to lead troops. In 1941 the region had already around a dozen troops of Scouts and a district rally was promoted by Leader Stirling, which was attended by 124 out of the 132 scouts then registered. In 1947 the rally, now an annual event, attracted 300 scouts.

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).

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.

Soon after his arrival in Africa, Leader Stirling saw the need and opportunity for nurse training in Tanzania. In 1935 there would be usually only one doctor and one to two nurses per hospital, all imported, except on the big centres. There were already 4 schools in the country to train "dispensers", now called medical assistants, but no nursing schools. The challenge to training nurses was that local school heads would hold onto their brightest students, encouraging them to go into teacher-training, under the impression that teaching was the only honourable occupation for an African woman.

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 on July 1929, qualifying MRCS and LRCT in the same year. He graduated MBBS, and later, in 1993, was elected FRCS, a very honourable and rare happening.

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 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, 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.

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.

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". His arrival was met with great enthusiasm by the mission: "the most joyful thing that has happened medically for a very long time".