When he ends his work-day at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital’s (QEH) special hypertension clinic next Thursday, Professor Henry Fraser will be hanging up his medical gloves, leaving behind an indelible contribution to the health of Barbados.
He is a driving force behind the Chronic Disease Research Centre which he headed as director until 2005 when he demitted office.
In a 41-year career devoted to teaching, research, patient care, and professional development, Fraser has made his mark locally and regionally.
He likes to identify himself as a country boy, a boy from St John, who played cricket in the canefields . . . the son of a “book-conscious” mother who was postmistress for St John and taught all four of her children at home. His father was the parochial treasurer who Fraser admits “never had a formal education”.
Because of this he says: “I was sent to school with a mission from my parents. My parents let it be known that I was expected to win a Barbados Scholarship and I went through school with that expectation.”
He did fulfil his parents’ expectations, winning a Barbados Scholarship while attending The Lodge School, and entered the University of the West Indies at Mona at age 18. His headmaster reacted with consternation. After all, his plans were for a Cambridge University education for this ace student.
Fraser spent two years in Jamaica, then went off to Britain to continue studies, later returning to Jamaica.
When he finally came back to Barbados, it was with a mission. The brilliant young doctor started work at the QEH in 1977 as a lecturer in medicine and associate consultant physician.
On September 30, he will do his last clinic at the hospital in his hypertension special clinic which he developed for the management of people with resistant hypertension. It will also be his last day of work after 33 years, and the end of a 41-year association with the QEH, the longest for any physician serving that institution.
“I came back and was asked to take over the organisation of the medical undergraduate teaching programme in internal medicine and organisation of the exams, but at the same time I had a signficant set of research goals in terms of those things I thought were priorities for good medical practice in Barbados,” Fraser said during an interview with the Sunday Sun.
But he very soon realised that Barbados was undergoing “a dramatic transformation” in chronic diseases.
“The obesity in Barbados hit me in the eye. It was amazing compared to Jamaica and Britain.”
He vowed to wage war against obesity and high blood pressure in Barbados alongside his work in clinical pharmacology and therapeutics.
“I tried to bring to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital an approach to hypertension and obesity management in order to deal with the epidemic,” he said.
Arising from discussions with University of the West Indies Cave Hill Campus colleagues like Professor Trevor Hassell in the Department of Medicine, it was decided that a centre devoted to research on the chronic diseases was needed.
The Chronic Disease Research Centre opened in 1992, and Fraser says with a measure of satisfaction “it is now in the extremely capable hands of Dr Anselm Hennis”.
Chronic disease has been his major concern throughout his career, and he spent a lot of time in research covering the fields related to therapeutics as well as related to the chronic disease epidemic.
To his credit there is also the therapeutic drug monitoring lab in Barbados, an innovation for Barbados and the Caribbean, and the only such lab set up in a public hospital at any time in any Caribbean country.
Fraser was appointed Dean of the Faculty of Medical Sciences at the UWI Cave Hill Campus in 2001. Responding to the aspirations of the principal Sir Hilary Beckles for a full medical faculty, Fraser met the new challenges head-on.
He is proud of the imposing new laboratory and teaching complex at Cave Hill and the 2008 admission of the first group of students who will be the first to enter and complete their entire five-year course of study at the UWI Cave Hill Faculty of Medical Sciences. Until then, for 43 years the clinical students had previously been taught only the final two years of the clinical programme of medicine at the QEH.
He leaves the hospital and the Faculty of Medical Sciences full of hope for the young doctors who will follow. “We have a lot of younger people who are going to do a brilliant job, and whom we have been able to encourage”, he remarks confidently, regretting that Barbados has already lost too many.
“The Queen Elizabeth hospital has developed through the vision of the people like Professor Walrond, Professor Hassell, Professor Nicholson . . .” and a host of other names of outstanding QEH specialists roll off his tongue.
“They have seen the need and they have fought tooth and nail to bring the skills that they have trained themselves in, to the benefit of the Barbadian patient”, Fraser observed.
Fraser also served as public orator for the UWI Cave Hill Campus, a role in which his distinct voice and deliberate style of speaking distinguished him. Little wonder he held that position from 1992 to 2010, making him the longest serving public orator at any UWI campus.
His has been a story of success and accomplishments.
Regrets? “My only regrets are that the vision I have for the QEH and the medical faculty are so long in coming.”
I have had a very exciting life, I have really enjoyed the challenges.
Now as he retires, he plans to devote time to the other exciting areas of interest – his wife, dematologist Dr Maureen Skeete-Fraser, the “little woman” with whom he had been asked to share the management of patients as a young intern; his painting and his work in the preservation of the history of Barbados through the Barbados National Trust.