Reginald Hamlin

Reginald Henry James Hamlin (born  April 21, 1908 in Napier , †  August 4, 1993 in Addis Ababa ) was a New Zealand doctor for gynecology and obstetrics . In 1974, he and his wife Catherine Hamlin founded the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital in Ethiopia, which treats women with birth-related fistulas free of charge. Both have received multiple awards for their decades of commitment to women in Ethiopia.

Life

Reginald Hamlin was born in Napier , New Zealand, in 1908 and studied medicine at Canterbury and Otago Universities . During the Second World War he served as a surgeon in the Navy for the New Zealand Armed Forces . After the end of the war, he qualified as a Fellow of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (FRCOG) in Great Britain , the British professional association of specialists in the fields of gynecology and obstetrics, and then worked in corresponding positions in London , Hong Kong and at the Crown Street Women's Hospital in Sydney .

In May 1959 he went to the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa because of a job advertisement in the medical journal The Lancet in order to set up a school for midwives as a consultant at the Princess Tsahai Memorial Hospital as part of a three-year project . He was accompanied by his wife Catherine Hamlin , who came from Australia and also worked as a gynecologist , whom he had met at Crown Street Women's Hospital and married in 1950. Both stayed in Ethiopia beyond the originally planned duration of their stay and devoted themselves to the treatment of birth-related fistulas in women , initially at the Princess Tsahai Memorial Hospital and from 1974 at the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital they founded . This is a tube-like connection between the vagina and the urinary bladder or the intestine , which can result from complications in childbirth or miscarriages and which has serious social consequences for the women affected due to uncontrolled leakage of urine or excrement from the vagina.

Reginald Hamlin was in 1965 "for his tireless efforts towards the welfare of women in Ethiopia" in the Order of the British Empire was added and in 1994 posthumously for Honorary Fellow of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists appointed. He died in Addis Ababa in 1993. The management of the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital, which he held until his death, was then taken over by his wife.

literature

• Bernard John Foster: Expatriates - Biogrphies - Ethiopia - Hamlin, Reginald Henry James, OBE In: Alexander Hare McLintock (Ed.): An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand . Wellington 1966 ( online [accessed December 15, 2015]).
• Hamlin, (Elinor) Catherine and Reginald Henry James. In: John Arnold, Deirdre Morris: Monash Biographical Dictionary of 20th Century Australia. Reed Reference Publishers, Port Melbourne 1994, ISBN 1-87-558919-8 , p. 231