He is regarded as a Caribbean icon in medicine and Sir Errol Walrond reluctantly acknowledges with a hint of modesty that he has indeed made a contribution.
That modesty, however, fades as one notices a definite passion when he is led into discussing his work, in the process revealing the story of a boy with a brilliant mind who rose from a modest home in Westbury New Road, St Michael, to recognition as an honorary fellow of Britain’s prestigious Royal College of Surgeons and now a knighthood.
Speaking at his Sandy Lane, St James home last week, his wife Beverley, Lady Walrond sitting close by, Sir Errol spoke of never giving thought to a career in medicine until he won a Barbados Scholarship in 1953.
He went to Harrison College by winning a Parish Scholarship and does not forget the experience of being brought up by a mother in a one-parent home after the family had lost the patriarch who had been killed in World War II.
The young Errol “Mickey” Walrond went off to Guy’s Hospital in London.
He remembers doing “pretty well” at the first stage of medical school, being awarded the prize in anatomy.
His outstanding performance led to an invitation by Guy’s to stay on for an extra year of study. His request to the Barbados Governmnent for an extension was met with a terse “no”.
“That left me doing my medical studies with my last year as a medical student without any funds. It meant I had to do things like waiting tables and working in the post office to get money to finish, but finish I did,” he says, without rancour.
He began his medical career in Britain as an intern at Guy’s, and would later work in other British hospitals while studying for his post-graduate fellowship which he obtained in 1964.
On his return to Barbados, he joined the medical staff at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH) for what he today terms “quite an interesting year”, starting as a general surgeon at a time when general surgeons did all of the emergency gynaecology at the hospital which had only one specialist in gynaecology.
Thus began a career with pioneering work and Sir Errol registering many a first.
He reflected for the Sunday Sun on those days when “there were lots of young women who were having miscarriages, abortions – some of them induced abortions illegally, because it was quite illegal in those days and in fact it was rather heart-rending”.
“When people talk about abortion or termination of pregnancies being wrong, I really say to them I would like them to go back and see the number of young women, some of whom lost their lives because they could not get a termination of pregnancy.”
The Barbados Family Planning Association was just about ten years old when Sir Errol got involved in the organisation’s mission to get family planning going.
“There were these young women coming in with miscarriages, or abortion, and one of the things we decided to do was to provide them with contraceptives right away because if you did not give them an effective means of contraception, the chances are they were going to get pregnant again quite soon. One of the methods of contraception we were using extensively in those days was the inter-uterine coil (known as the IUD) . . . .
“Whenever we did a D&C (dilation and curetage), we would put in an IUD right away so that those women had a contraceptive device. This is the first time this kind of thing was being done anywhere in the world . . . . We did decide to share this with the world.”
This was a critical phase in Barbados’ quest to disseminate family planning education widely and with the late family planning advocate, Sir Clyde Gollop, Sir Errol ventured out into communities in search of patients whom he feared would not return to the clinic for follow-up counselling.
“We would go out on a Sunday morning with the late Sir Clyde Gollop, who was an invaluable facilitator, not only to get into the hidden places in Barbados, but to know how to be able to speak to these young women, which was terribly important.”
He remembers the effort put into winning the co-operation of men in these women’s lives, who put up “a lot of resistance” to contraception for the women.
That first year at the QEH tested Sir Errol’s knowledge and ability. Reflecting on high points of his career, he recalls one particular case during that time.
“I was treating a man who hadruptured his spleen and was bleeding profusely. We had no blood and we had to keep sucking his blood out and recycling his blood . . . . Nowadays, they do it with all kinds of fancy machines. In those days, we sucked it out, put it through a metal sieve and put it back.”
Experiences like this informed his observation: “I think I established a pretty good reputation as a surgeon and you sometimes have to do very difficult surgery. I suppose sometimes when you have done a particularly difficult surgical procedure, you really feel some satisfaction both for the patient and for yourself.”
The QEH once lost this promising surgeon to the University of the West Indies hospital in Jamaica which subsequently invited him to be the professor for a new branch of the Faculty of Medicine, set up in Barbados.
In Jamaica, Sir Errol met his wife who accompanied him when he returned to Barbados to work. Many years later, she reminds him of his excitement at heading straight from the Deep Water Harbour to Westbury Road to see the chattel house where he had grown up and to meet boyhood friends whom he had left there.
The retired professor emeritus, who remains a consultant at the QEH, also spoke on another pleasing element.
“One of the things that gives you a lot of satisfaction is to see the people that you have taught from the time they enter medical school coming on and developing outstanding careers.
“They always tell me that I had a reputation for being hard but I make no apologies for it because I always said to them: ‘Look, I am training you to be a doctor who will possibly have to look after me or my family, so you have to be the best.’ I am quite happy to say that for most of the people I trained, I am quite happy to go to them for my medical services – and I do so.”
The first Barbadian to be diagnosed with AIDS in 1984 came in on his watch. He recalls the “huge amount of homophobia” at the time.
“I went to the medical association and I said: ‘Look, this disease is here. It is going to have important implications and we as an association really ought to do something about it’.”
Sir Errol impressed on medical colleagues, “who were in full-blown panic” about AIDS, the urgency to educate themselves and the public who were “equally in the panic mode”.
He became the first chairman of the National Advisory Committee on AIDS, the organization that set up the broad national response to the disease, and was fearlessly outspoken as he courageously led the charge to educate Barbadians and create an awareness of the serious nature of the disease. Because of his efforts he was asked to represent the region on the global programme on AIDS.
Yet he is disappointed that the level of stigma and discrimination against people in Barbados infected with HIV is still high.
After 27 years at the QEH and four decades in medicine, this seemingly indefatigable Barbadian doctor says Barbados has achieved “an awful lot in terms of improvement of the health services and the health of the nation”, but several areas still needed to be addressed.
He added there must be planning for its “continual expansion”.
“One of the things our Governments have to be very careful about is that we need to be able to deliver the kind of services that our people expect. But I think we have to do it not by simply following what goes on in the United States, but to be able to produce the best with less, and the way you do that is by the development of the health professionals, ensuring they are well trained and continually being trained.”
Sir Errol’s son, Maurice, has followed in his footsteps as a Barbados Scholar and now consultant surgeon at the QEH. His daughter Maya, also a Barbados Scholar, is a banker.
