Paul Clark travelled to Uganda, for a UTV News Special shown April 10th, 6.10pm to meet Ian Clarke – a Northern Irish GP turned bush doctor. The following is taken from The Belfast Telegraph and can be found in full at
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/features/daily-features/article2437599.ece
Dr Ian Clarke, from Northern Ireland, has spent 20 years working as a doctor in Uganda, where death is a way of life – and something he has had to face himself. UTV’s Paul Clark met the extraordinary GP turned bush doctor for a documentary being screened.
Dr Ian Clarke’s autobiography has a peculiar title – The Man With The Key Has Gone. He chose it because of his frustration with Ugandan authority, as he attempted to establish a clinic in the African bush.
Ian has lost count of the number of times he reached an office or store, sometimes after many hours of driving, and often with an urgent need for some medical supplies, only to be told: “The man with the key has gone.”
It reflected not just a problem in bureaucracy, but an attitude to life in general. His colleagues would seldom complain. They accepted that the store, or office, was closed.
“Why is the store closed?” “Because the man with the key has gone.” End of story.
That is the environment in which Ian Clarke, originally from Northern Ireland, has chosen to work for the past 20 years. He is a GP turned bush doctor.
His first clinic in Africa was held under the trees. Then it moved to his house, and finally to a purpose-built clinic.
That clinic was located in an area known to the outside world as the ‘Lowero Triangle.’ It was the centre of the killing fields of Uganda, during the country’s civil war.
And, it was into this district that Ian Clarke, a missionary doctor, had travelled, in 1987.
There were many times when he struggled to keep control of his emotions – thousands of miles from home and surveying the devastation of a war which was barely over.
Little did he know then just how deeply his destiny would be linked with Uganda.
He admits that if he had been able to gaze over the vista of the following years, he would have been crushed.
“If I had been able to see the dimensions of human suffering, disease and death which we would face in the future, if I had known that sickness and death would touch our dearest friends and that finally I would not be immune myself, I would have wanted to turn back there and then,” he says.
Ian Clarke was not an experienced gynaecologist or surgeon, but the experienced people were not there. And he was the man on the spot.
People had heard there was a doctor in the area, and they just kept coming. They had faith that he could do something, but Ian knew his limitations.
He recalls: “A mother had delivered a baby in the middle of the night, by the side of the road with no help, and it had died. The family were so grateful for my help, but what had I done? I had come too late.
“I marvelled at these people. They had so little. A few bundles of clothes, a few saucepans, nothing that we would consider of any value. I had let them down because I hadn’t got there in time to deliver the baby. Yet, they had a graciousness of spirit and a sense of thankfulness which touched my heart and made me feel small.”
This was one of many incidents which frustrated Ian. It was these feelings of inadequacy which made him want to do more for the people. That clinic, which he set up 20 years ago, has now grown into Kiwoko – a mission hospital based in the Ugandan bush.
Today, the hospital is in the epicentre of the AIDS pandemic. Death is a way of life with which we are not familiar in this country. And Ian has had to face death himself. He has been diagnosed with cancer. Currently, he is in remission.
The hospital he founded is now a partner with Makerere University in Kampala, the Ugandan capital. Students from the capital are trained in rural medicine. After all, most people in this central African country do not live in towns and cities, but in the bush.
There is even a link with Queen’s University in Belfast. A nurse tutor from the mission hospital has recently returned to Kiwoko, after receiving further training in Northern Ireland.
Ian has even greater ideas. He is planning another hospital in an entirely different part of rural Uganda – in an area where the Lord’s Resistance Army is rampant. Post-ceasefire, he is working on rural health programmes in Southern Sudan. But the legacy of this local doctor is Kiwoko hospital. Its success is that Ian has taken a back seat. He is no longer involved in its operation.
Those who work in the hospital are mostly Ugandan. Increasingly, it’s being run by locals, but a number still come from Northern Ireland where the vision of Dr Ian Clarke endures.
