This is the third of the five recollections I have of Prof David Morley, who established the international Child Health Department at the Institute of Child health, at the Children's hospital, Great Ormond street, London.
The Monday morning conversations I have had with him spread over at least six months in 1987, touched several issues of children, their health, growth, development, education, child labour, malnutrition, etc.
On one Monday I was late by couple of minutes to reach his room. He was waiting for me with a cup of coffee. When he saw me, her asked me to sit down, while he went to warm the cup of coffee. He spent the fist few minutes enquiring about the wellness of our family. He knowing that Anna was a doctor wondered if she can volunteer to help in the department!
He was interested to know more about ASHIRVAD and its future as he had not heard about any initiatives in India at that time about Child Development Centres. David was a non-conformist. He solved problems by creating a new approach. He did not wait for approval or public acclaim. His suggestion to me was that we need to design new approaches which would work in the community. When I told him that we had introduced the practice of monthly measurement of head circumference of all children born with high risk factors, by using a paper tape given to the mother, at the time of leaving the hospital after child birth birth, he was most delighted. Our conversation turned to measuring the anterior fontanelle and palpation of the cranial sutures, which according to him also would give substantial information about the head size, shape, vitamins D status, muscle tone, etc.
When I asked him to share his experiences which have been most fascinating for him, he turned to the two charities he established- TALC (Teaching Aids at Low Cost, 1965) and Child to Child programme(1978)
During his time in Africa, he had realised that health workers had limited access to the modern scientific information Books were expensive and the internet did not exist at that time. He got his friends to help and developed a programme to access books from publishers directly at reduced cost and made them available in developing countries. He produced slides on about thirty topics related to child health or development, nutrition, feeding, oral rehydration, immunisation, etc. and sent them to health workers in developing countries. I remember getting the series of slides on child development and using them widely at ASHIRVAD. While talking about this initiative, he was most effusive and appreciative of enormous. support he got globally to make this programme take off distributing about 1 million books by 1987.
The second charity he co-founded in 1978 was the Child to Child programme where he got the older children educated in health, nutrition, oral rehydration, growth monitoring, etc that they could to 'watch over' the younger children at home or in the school. In many rural communities in Africa, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, etc. both parents went to work and the older children were parent substitutes for about eight hours a day. David used this as a formal programme which schools could use to train older children to take care of the health needs of younger children. At that time when he was sharing the story of this, this programme had spread to 91 countries.
Not that he did not have hurdles to cross in establishing both these charities. The publishers of the book objected to David making books available at subsidised cost, which affected the regular sale of their books. There were times when the publisher's lobby refused to supply him books. That was when he used the help of the parliamentarians in the UK to get the publishers oblige. He knew many parliamentarians well enough to ge help for the British government to sponsor some of his programmes in developing countries. I got a sense from what he said that that he had more friends than critics.
I remember on one occasion at the clinical meeting of the hospital, he made a presentation of the global Measles generated health burden. He was seeking for Measles immunisation to be included in the primary immunisation package in all the developing countries. Some senior consultants wondered how this could be possible as it involved a heavy cost to the governments to subsidise. David's reply was simple and practical, 'I came here to appeal to all of you to offer a monthly gift for 12 months to help Chile to introduce Measles immunisation from 1988'. He raised 50,000 pounds form gathering of 200 doctors in that afternoon. Such was the charisma of David and the power of his appeal.
In the vote of thanks, the director of the Institute, while referring to David's talk referred to the turning point in the talk of David, when he mentioned that he volunteered to receive Measles vaccination fo this children when it was under clinical trial. The audience recognised that David was an advocate for Measles vaccination because he genuinely wanted to change the health profile of children globally.
It was his practice to visit the health ministers of a country he visited-he had been to 82 countries by then. During his meetings with the health minister, he would present the state of children in that country and their disease profiles, that he got the health ministers to understand the action plan that was needed through public health measures. Subsequently he would contact the other policy makers in the country to take the action plan forward. He would usually look for a champion, preferably a paediatrician who can be the galvaniser of a new idea.
He turned to me at the end of the conversation on that Monday morning and asked me a question, 'Have you thought about what you would like to leave behind when you retire from the field of Child Development'! I had not thought about it. He waited for a response. I said, 'A department in a medical college of Developmental Paediatrics that would be a training centre in child development'. It was just a dream and wish! It became a reality in 1997, when ASHIRVAD partnered with Christian Medical College, Vellore to start the first department of Developmental paediatrics in India.
David got all his listeners to think and act. He brought change in perspectives. He created ideas and got others to see the value of those ideas.
As I got up to leave his room he told me, 'do come every Monday.' I kept that Monday morning date with him whenever he was in London.
It is. along time since these conversations. Some content of these conversations are fresh and clear. His sense of humour and interest in what others were doing to innovate came forth in every conversation.
David was not just a Paediatrician, but a human being with a large heart. He made thousands of children escape the hazards of Measles globally. I remember Professor Jacob John of CMC Vellore referring to David, when he was championing for including the Measles immunisation in the primary immunisation schedule in india.
M.C.Mathew (text and photo form the internet)
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