Runa Mackay

In 1985 she was the Scottish delegate to an International Fellowship of Reconciliation to the Middle East. The same year, she was appointed secretary for the UN International Year of Peace Scottish Council.

She retired in 1984 and by 1985 had moved back to Edinburgh. Between 1985 and 1990 Mackay went back to Edinburgh University to obtain an honours degree in Arabic and Islamic Studies, and she started to work for Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) in 1987, working in refugee camps in Lebanon, mainly Qasmiyeh camp, and a small hospital for children in Hebron that she visited in 1991 at MAP's invitation. Mackay eventually became a trustee of MAP, and visited Lebanon and the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and also opening a MAP in Scotland which ran annual fundraising events. Mackay was awarded the MAP lifetime achievement award in 2014 in recognition of her years of service to the Palestinian people.

After her graduation in 1952 Mackay worked briefly as a registrar in the Children's Hospital in Manchester, before she took a position as a locum paediatrician at the EMMS Nazareth Hospital in Israel, in 1954. In spite of this role initially having a proposed duration of six months, Mackay stayed in Nazareth for thirty years, working as an obstetrician, gynaecologist and paediatrician. Her career in Israel was interrupted by a return to Edinburgh in 1957 to undertake further training in obstetrics, and a year's sabbatical in 1976, during which Mackay worked in India. On returning to Israel, Mackay accepted a position as a District Medical Officer with the Israeli Ministry of Health, where she would stay for the next ten years, focusing primarily on improving conditions for Palestinians living in areas near Nazareth.

Mackay was born in Kingston upon Hull, the daughter of Duncan Matheson Mackay, an ophthalmologist and Anna Mackay (née Train), and went to secondary school at Esdaile College in Edinburgh. Following her father's footsteps, Mackay qualified as a bachelor of medicine and surgery in 1944 from Edinburgh University in 1944, and attended the Edinburgh Medical Missionary Society’s Livingstone Memorial Dispensary in the city's Cowgate. During World War II, she spent three summers working with the Women's Land Army at the Scottish Borders. She undertook further study, becoming a doctor in 1952, and a Member of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh in 1954.

Runa Mackay (July 30, 1921 - May 31, 2020) was a medical doctor and peace campaigner that dedicated much of her life to looking after the health of Palestinian people and victims of war and exile.