Jim and Meg Lawless have had varied and somewhat dramatic careers in medicine, spanning multiple continents, but no effort has seemed so monumental than their journey creating a children’s hospital and a flying doctor service in Zambia in the 1960s.
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Both doctors, Jim and Meg lived and worked in Zambia from 1961, and were present during the Independence struggle.
“Zambia became independent in 1964 and we were there at the time of independence, so we experienced the transition from a colonial power that was strictly divided into black and white, which we found appalling and made us feel ashamed of being British,” Meg said.
As doctors in an African British colony, Meg and Jim witnessed first-hand the distinct and profound difference in treatment available for the white European patients and the black African patients, particularly in the children’s ward where Jim worked.
“The hospital was much better staffed on the white side than black, even though there were more patients on the African side,” Meg said.
“Jim looked after the children’s ward, and in three years, he saw 1000 children die in that ward, which triggered him to start doing something about it.
“We were very pro-African, unlike most of the white people there — not many Europeans were in favour of the people getting independence, but we felt very strongly that they should get independence.
“Our friends who had been in the movement for independence then became the politicians — through caring for their children, we got to know some of the coming politicians in Zambia.
“We knew President (Kenneth) Kaunda, and he was a huge supporter of both of Jim’s ideas to start a children’s hospital and also the Flying Doctor Service.”
The ZFDS began in 1965 with just Meg and Jim in the beginning, and Meg tells dramatic stories of the pair riding through the African bush on bicycles to a remote location chosen by Jim earlier in a hired helicopter, with bearers in single file carrying supplies, led by a villager with the all important radio carried on his head.
“There were really no medical services in the rural areas,” Meg said.
“As soon as we stopped anywhere, we were surrounded by villagers wanting medical help. It was a situation where you really felt you were doing something because they’d never had antibiotics, they’d never had any medical care really.”
At Mushingashi in the country’s west, the villagers had completed a landable airstrip after three weeks of hard work and the couple camped there until the first plane landed.
“We had one pilot and we managed to get the money for an aeroplane, a Piper Aztec,” Meg said.
“The service built up, and by 1967 we had six aircraft, and doctors and nurses from overseas, because there was only one Zambian doctor in the country then, and he was the Minister of Health.
“We advertised in London, and we ended up with doctors not just from the UK, some from Australia, Canada and so on — mostly young, having just finished their hospital residency, but some of them were consultants or GPs who took six months off. Nurses were recruited in the same way.
“We had six-month contracts which gave them an opportunity to take time out of their careers — they were not well paid, but came for experience.
“The service did extraordinarily well, and by the end, we had about eight airstrips and we had intentions of covering the whole country.”
Upon Jim and Meg’s return from Zambia to the UK, Jim was determined to put the story of Zambian independence, the children’s hospital, and the Zambian Flying Doctor Service on paper, and so Nobody Dies Anymore was written.
At the time, during the 1970s, the pair struggled to get the book published.
“The book was accepted by well-known publishers but after a few days they changed their minds saying it was too pro-African,” Meg said.
“We battled on trying to do that for a while, and then we came out to Australia, and we were so busy with our practice that we didn’t have time.
“It was frantic, for 20 years, just the two of us covering quite a wide area around Apollo Bay until anther practice came to the town in 1995.
“Then 10 or 12 years ago, we started again trying to get it published, and one of our receptionists was very helpful and restructured it, but we still didn’t have much luck — we were told no-one cares about memoirs about Africa.”
Jim died in 2016, and Meg ran their practice for another three years before she retired to Moama at age 85.
“The January before I came to Moama, quite by chance, I met a Zambian and I gave him the manuscript of the book, and he was absolutely fascinated,’’ Meg said.
“He is a Zambian who has been working in Melbourne for some years, and he knows a lot of the current hierarchy in Zambia, and President Kaunda’s son was a great friend of his.
“He was fascinated, and said ‘Zambia now is very very interested in their colonial past, they went through a stage where they didn’t want to know, and they have no documents to tell them any of their own history.
“Those early years of the newly independent nation were difficult, because the public servants were still British, but the politicians were black.
“We found that the politicians would have an idea, and then the public servants would block it.”
Meg also noted the book is doing well in Zambia, being included in schools as an historical text.
Beyond the main story of the work Meg and Jim and their fight for more medical services, Nobody Dies Anymore tells specific stories from their time in Zambia, including the more cinematic tales.
“In the process, there were some adventures: we had a plane crash which nearly killed us in 1966 before we had the other member of staff, and a rocket piece came down from outer space,” she said.
The book closes out when Meg and Jim are on their way out of Africa in 1970, having made one last tearful stop in Mushingashi, cementing the impact of medicines and medical care on a rural community.
“There were speeches and beer and dancing, and the children were fit and strong. The old men and women still lived, happy victors over pneumonia and death; and Maria, the woman we had transfused on the ground brought us her children to see... The wreckage of the plane that almost destroyed our lives still lay in the bush, and the piece of rocket from Space still towered upward to the sky. We would never be forgotten; and as long as men lived in the valley, they said, we would be remembered. We were blinded with tears and grief and left them forever for a world they could not know.”
Nobody Dies Anymore by James Lawless is available online only, including on Amazon at https://www.amazon.com.au/Nobody-Dies-Anymore-vol-1-2/dp/1922722286/