Fred Hollows

(9 April 1920 – 10 February 1993)

One of the world’s best known stirrers for social justice, Fred Hollows dedicated his life to ensuring the most disadvantaged people in the world (including the Indigenous people of our own country Australia) were provided with the highest quality eye care at the lowest possible costs, through training and self-empowerment of the people. Here is brief history of Fred Hollows’ life:

• 1929 – 9^th April, born in Dunedin, New Zealand and at age 7 moved to Palmerston North, where he spent his childhood
• 1948-50 – Started studying Arts and Divinity at Glenleith Bible College in Dunedin, changed to Arts in 2^nd year, and finished Bachelor of Arts at Victoria University in Wellington
• 1951 – 55 – Went to medical school at the University of Otago in Dunedin, after which he worked at Wellington Hospital
• 1957 – 60 – After passing final exams, worked as a Resident (house surgeon) at Auckland Public Hospital
• 1958 – Married first wife, Mary Skiller
• 1961 – Went to the UK to study Diploma in Ophthalmology (as there was no opportunity to do this study in New Zealand at the time) where he won the Moorfields Junior prize for top performance in his exams
• 1961-64 – worked as Ophthalmic Registrar in the Royal Infirmary at Cardiff
• 1965 – became head of the Department of Ophthalmology at the University of New South Wales in Sydney and during his time there performed the first cataract extraction in the Prince of Wales Hospital
• 1968 – The Unlucky Australians, a book about the strike of the Gurindji people of the Northern Territory is published by Frank Hardy, who then convinces Fred to come up north look at the health of the eyes of the people, where he is appalled to find their eye health services seriously lacking
• Early 1970s – Realising how hard it was for Aboriginal people to get access to health services, Fred Hollows helps to set up the first Aboriginal Medical Centre in Redfern, N.S.W.

-Also went to Bourke where he found signs of trachoma in many of the Aboriginal children and so helped to organise treatment for them, as well as nutritional supplements to help their general health and wellbeing

• 1973 – went to Chihuahua in northern Mexico, to study the Tarahumara Indians, who had no known heart attack sufferers amongst them and extremely low cholesterol, he found that consequently they also had no eye problems, but could not make many conclusions about their vegetarian diet and heavy exercise as they were also very genetically homogenous
• 1974 – Fred travelled around Australia investigating the prevalence of trachoma, he found unusually high numbers in many remote areas and so decided to start a campaign to eliminate all blindness caused by trachoma in Australia.
• 1975 – government funding was sought for the trachoma program and the setting up process began. The project, officially named the National Trachoma and Eye Health Program (NTEHP) continued for many years, run mainly by volunteers, and treated over 27,000 people for trachoma. That same year Fred’s first wife Mary died in South Africa.
• 1980 – married Gabi O’Sullivan, an orthoptist, with whom he had five children; Cam, Emma, Anna-Louise and twins Rosie and Ruth.
• 1977 – The trachoma program is kicked out of Queensland because of political interference.
• 1981 – Fred resigned from NTEHP due to political opposition to the program amongst other things, but after a meeting with the Prime Minister of the time, Malcolm Fraser promised more funding of Aboriginal Health services, he cancelled his resignation. He also received an Advance Australia Award for Aboriginal eye care that year.
• 1985 – refused to accept the honorary Order of Australia he was offered by the Governor-General, as the health of the Aboriginal people in some of the places Fred had visited some time ago was still very bad
• 1985 – at the request of Dr Pararajah Segram, a Sri Lankan humanitarian and eye surgeon, Fred goes to Nepal to assess the eye health of the people, ends up finding them in a similar situation to the Aboriginal people he had met in remote areas of Australia, and performs numerous surgical procedures on cataract sufferers
• 1986 – makes his first visit to Eritrea (and Africa) where he treats many of the people and organises to bring the only eye surgeon in the country (who hadn’t been trained to do the job) to Australia for ophthalmological training.
• January, 1989 – he is diagnosed with cancer
• April, 1989 – Fred Hollows becomes an Australian citizen
• January, 1990 – he returns to Eritrea, trains some Eritreans in basic eye surgery and organises for some diagnostic and treatment equipment to be sent over, however not all of it gets through Sudanese customs. However, he came up with the idea of setting up an intra-ocular lens (IOL) factory in Eritrea, so that the Eritreans could make their own for a lot less than the import price of $140.
• 1990 – Fred Hollows is named Australian of the Year and receives the Human Rights Medal, as well as an Advance Australia Award for Medicine and Overseas Aid
• 1991 – returns to the now free Eritrea with more equipment, trains more surgeons and decides on a location for the IOL factory. He becomes the first foreigner to be given honorary citizenship of free Eritrea. His autobiography with Peter Corris is also published that year and he receives several honorary degrees, including a Doctor of Medicine and Doctor of Science from UNSW, a Degree of Doctor of Science at Macquarie University and he is admitted as a Doctor of Medicine at UNSW. However the accolades don’t stop there, that same year he is named Humanist of the Year as well as being named a Paul Harris Fellow by Rotary International. It is also this year that he receives the highest honour that can be awarded to an Australian citizen as he is appointed Companion General Division of the Order of Australia (AC).
• December, 1991 – makes fifth visit to Nepal, to facilitate the establishment of an IOL factory in that country
• 1992 – starts the Hollows foundation, is awarded an honorary doctorate by the Queensland University if Technology and goes to Vietnam to see if an IOL factory can be established there too
• 9^th February 1993, - his fellow ophthalmologists present him with The Royal Australian College of Ophthalmologists Medal for years of distinguished meritorious and selfless service
• 10^th February 1993, Fred Hollows dies at his home in Randwick, surrounded by family and friends and was given a State Funeral on the 15^th February at St Mary’s Cathedral in Sydney.
• 1993 also saw Fred Hollows receive more accolades, even after his death. He received the Rotary Award for World Understanding, Rotary International’s highest honour (previously awarded to Pope John-Paul II and the International Red Cross), the Albert Schweitzer Award of Distinction from Chapman University, USA and has been honoured by Lions Club International as a Melvin Jones Fellow

Though Professor Hollows sadly left us in 1993, his legacy lives on in the work of The Fred Hollows Foundation (www.hollows.org), which continues the fight against the health inequalities between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, and the fight to make sure no-one in this world remains needlessly blind.

References

Fred Hollows: An autobiography with Peter Corris, Kerr Publishing, NSW 1991

The Fred Hollows Foundation website www.hollows.org

Fred Hollows has been one of my main heroes since grade 7. The most inspirational thing about Fred was his determination to take a thing he loved and combined it with another to help less fortunate people in the world. Some of the things that make him such a great stirrer were his determination and the ability to help others even when hurdles present themselves. For example he continued to help even when he was diagnosed his cancer and it is not mentioned in his profile but his dream since he was a kid was to become a missionary. When this fell through he found a different way to help.

His greatest achievement was how he got the care program he created to spread around the world and the amount of people he helped. Also his involvement in the HIV/AIDS campaigns was great he was one of the first to start helping with programs like that in other countries.