My sister, Dorothy Logie, who has died aged 83 of Alzheimer’s, was a Scottish GP whose commitment to global health extended to HIV/Aids care and advocacy in Africa.
Dorothy was born in Aberdeen, the daughter of Adeline (nee Donald), a housewife, and William Caie, group secretary of Aberdeen General Hospitals who helped establish the NHS in Aberdeen, inspiring Dorothy to study medicine. She left St Margaret’s school aged 17, qualified as MBChB from Aberdeen University in 1966, and married Sandy Logie, a fellow doctor, two weeks later.
She and Sandy travelled the following year to the Gambia to join the Medical Research Council; Sandy was a medical officer and Dorothy researched maternal malaria. When she became pregnant with their first child, she returned to Aberdeen, but the visit sparked a lifelong love of Africa.
In 1976, when Sandy was appointed a consultant physician for the Borders Health Board, based initially at the Peel hospital, Galashiels, the family moved to the village of Bowden, and Dorothy became a GP partner in the nearby market town of Earlston. By now she had three children, and life was busy, in the days when GPs were on call 24/7.
After recovering from breast cancer aged 38, she set up a support group, Reach for Recovery, for other local women in a similar situation. Her activism developed through organisations including the Medical Campaign Against Nuclear Weapons and its successor Medact. Dorothy was active in Christian Aid and Cafod, and through the Catholic church she met many young seminarians who were travelling to and from Central and South America. She and Sandy joined a medical study tour to Brazil in 1979, and she joined the Jubilee 2000 campaign for the cancellation of national debt in Latin America and Africa, collaborating with the economist Ann Pettifor. She also wrote in medical journals including the BMJ on aspects of global health.
In 1992 Sandy took early retirement and returned to Africa to work at St Francis hospital in Katete, Zambia, during the developing HIV crisis. He contracted HIV from a needlestick injury and died in 2001. Determined to continue his legacy, Dorothy, at the age of 60, completed an MSc in tropical medicine at Liverpool University, as part of which she researched the effectiveness of a morphine public health programme in Uganda. This led to work with Hospice Uganda, improving access to morphine for palliative care in communities affected by HIV/Aids, and in 2005 she spoke about her research at the World Health Assembly in Geneva.
Dorothy continued work as an assessor of funded programmes for the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund, wrote about Rwanda’s health system in the Lancet, and lectured widely on global health. She remained closely involved with the St Francis hospital, where the Sandy Logie Clinic was established.
She also founded a charity in 2002 supporting health projects in Africa, now called the Logie Legacy, and encouraged NHS Borders to establish a partnership in 2008 with St Francis hospital that continues today. She was a true doctor across borders.
Dorothy is survived by her children, Catherine, David and Andrew, and her grandchildren, Skye, Finn, Orla, Alessio and Reuben, and by me.
Source:
www.theguardian.com
