THE CONFAB WITH MICHAEL G IN CONVERSATION WITH DR ROSE McGREADY

The Dr Rose McGready Foundation was established in 2022 as a registered charity to support the life-saving work of Professor Rose McGready, an Australian doctor who has spent almost 30 years caring for marginalised people on the Thai-Myanmar border.

Karen and Burmese communities have fled violence, human rights abuse and poverty in Myanmar to seek sanctuary in Thailand. However, even if they make it to the Thai side of the border as migrants, they still have almost no access to public health services, as they are not citizens. Pregnant women and babies are particularly vulnerable.

For the past three decades, Rose and her team have often been their only source of health care in rural areas, through a network of clinics focused on preventing infectious diseases and providing maternal and child health.

These clinics offer culturally appropriate, high-quality care, and have saved countless lives. But financial support is needed to keep this crucial care going, including to fund:

·       Dedicated health care workers to assist women in labour and       manage life-threatening complications

·       Medication, equipment and logistic support

·       Emergency hospital costs for patients who need higher-level care.

Join me on the Confab to ain an understanding of her life journey and passions.

Transcript

SPEAKER_05 0:27

Welcome to the Confab with Michael G. with the People Powered Radio 2XFM ninety eight point three. We're streaming online and on demand on two xfm.org.au. And tonight our guest is Professor Rose McCready, an Australian doctor who has spent almost 30 years caring for marginalized people on the Thai Minima border. She's also head of the Dr. Rose McCready Foundation, which was established in 2022. Now for the past three decades, Rose and her team members have often been the only source of health care in rural areas through a network of clinics focusing on preventing infectious diseases and providing maternal and child health. Tonight we're going to learn a little bit about her life story and passions. Welcome to the Confab with Michael G. Rose, welcome to Two Double X. How are you?

SPEAKER_00 4:27

Very well. Thanks so much, Mike, for inviting me in.

SPEAKER_05 4:31

Now it's a pleasure to have you as a guest on the Confab with Michael G. Now we played a beautiful track to begin this programme today. Would you like to introduce the track? Who performs it and most importantly, why did you select it?

SPEAKER_00 4:46

William Tell Overture from the London Symphony Orchestra. This is a song where it's hard to sit down, which is a bit like me, and it's also a song about plagiarism. So one of the oldest in the world. So that's why.

SPEAKER_05 5:17

I'd like you'd like to talk about your mum and dad. Were they b born in Australia or were they immigrants to Australia?

SPEAKER_00 5:23

First generation of immigrant children. They're from Northern Ireland. Uh they worked in England. They came out as the ten pound poms, but they weren't. And um both they knew each other before they left and set up their lives here. Dad's first job was in Alice Springs.

SPEAKER_05 5:43

And what did he do?

SPEAKER_00 5:44

Builder, carpenter and joiner by trade. Built more than four or five thousand houses in Canberra when the government supported that type of thing.

SPEAKER_05 5:53

Alice Springs, was that a first choice of going to Alice Springs or was that where the the work was?

SPEAKER_00 5:58

He was working for Orlett's, not sure if they still exist, and they had the contract to build the the primary school, which is still there.

SPEAKER_05 6:07

And did your mum work or was she uh a stay-at-home mum in those days?

SPEAKER_00 6:11

She had four children under five and but she she worked. And uh she would have gone to work when I was in kindergarten.

SPEAKER_05 6:22

And what work was she involved in?

SPEAKER_00 6:23

She's a teacher and primary school teacher, and the last fifteen years in education in ACT she worked with uh special needs children in normal primary schools and she didn't mind if you have downs or attention deficit disorder, it it doesn't matter. You will read, you will write, you will do your maths. That's it.

SPEAKER_05 6:44

And did your mum uh train to be a teacher back in in in Ireland or was it in Australia?

SPEAKER_00 6:50

Mostly UK. Um but the special ed, she went back to school when we were old enough. She went back to school in the evenings and did more work on special ed because she'd worked in a deaf school in the UK.

SPEAKER_05 7:03

And so your father was a builder, your mum was a teacher, they first settled in in in the middle of Australia, and what took them away from the middle of Australia to on the East Coast?

SPEAKER_00 7:13

So the dad's company, we just moved with the company. So South Australia, Adelaide, after Adelaide, Canberra. After Canberra, we were all happy in school and uh all its went Queensland, but we dad became self-employed.

SPEAKER_05 7:30

So you came to came to went to Adelaide, you went to the East Coast, Canberra for a while, then up to Queensland.

SPEAKER_00 7:37

Born in Adelaide.

SPEAKER_05 7:38

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 7:38

Moved here around four and a half, got shouted at because I wound down the window on the ferry. Night time, there was lights, it looked exciting, but it was cold outside. And then we had a rent a house for six months and then we moved into the house where we grew up in Cork. Went to Cook Primary School and did all our education in Canberra. But when it came to university after two years at ANU, I wasn't sure what I would do with that science degree. Um mum encouraged me to look do something else, so I ended up at Sydney University.

SPEAKER_05 8:15

Let's take you back to primary school. What was Cork primary school like in the early days?

SPEAKER_00 8:20

Yeah, we were the our class was the first ones to come in at Kindi when the school opened and go through to sixth grade. It was fantastic. We had um we had great teachers. Did sport, did you know, it was the days when they took you to the swimming pool for two weeks of lessons, you went to the police station and learned how to ride a bike. It was very hands-on practical things. The boys and girls played uh, we did play British Bulldog 123, but that was banned and it was changed to Red Rover. Um there was a slope that got very frosty in winter, so that was our ski field. Two people held your hand and you went down. It was just really good, great fun. We also were part of a initiative to have an an orchestra. So different primary schools throughout the ACT were given different instruments. Our group got the strings, Cook got the strings. There was also and they finally brought us together to make a concert in Canberra Hall. That was great.

SPEAKER_05 9:21

So you're in primary school here. Your mum and dad have a a Irish English sort of background. Did you find that your mum and dad assimilated in into the Australian sort of environment, in in the in the sort of much more relaxed environment that, say, they had over in the UK and and in Ireland?

SPEAKER_00 9:39

Oh, I think the reason they left UK was there was some discrimination going on, so they were very happy to get to Australia. And we we had every nationality through the household, many European countries coming through. They're all dads, workmates and primary school also had different well at that time it was mostly European immigrants, so everyone together. Our neighbours were a fantastic Italian couple.

SPEAKER_05 10:06

And so it's the school you had a broad cultural background. Did the uh did the teachers at that stage and I won't sort of go into your age at that I mean how far back that was, because that might give away your age. We'd never ask the guests about talk about their age. But was that school uh and you were saying it was it encompassing of the different cultures and and did they celebrate the cultures that were at that school or not?

SPEAKER_00 10:31

No. But my favourite buddy for Jack's was um a girl from Sri Lanka, from Ceylon at that time it was called. So Yeah. We had we had Greek, Italian, oh there was different nationalities, but gen at school you generally were discouraged from speaking your speaking anything other than English at that time.

SPEAKER_05 10:54

And did you find any of the subjects you talked a little a lot about outside curriculum sort of activities? Were there any elements of of the of the learning that you were acquiring at school that were starting to become of of interest to yourself?

SPEAKER_00 11:09

I liked everything. I liked them all. That was part of my trouble. Like everything they'd put in front of me, I liked it.

SPEAKER_05 11:16

And were your mum and dad sort of m parents that were engaged in that education, or did they see that that was just a way of getting you looked after during the school time? Given that your mum was a teacher?

SPEAKER_00 11:27

Yeah, so we were very close. We're just we're a year up nearly a year between us, and mum became a teacher at Cook Primary School and was very busy and different members of our family had different learning abilities, so we helped each other with help each other.

SPEAKER_05 11:45

And so where did you put yourself in that spectrum of learning skills? Were you a high achiever or where were you where would you fit in your learning abilities?

SPEAKER_00 11:55

Well, I know my my I have two brothers who are more clever than me, but they wouldn't admit it. I learned all my sp helpful sporting hints from one of my brothers, and learning to love people who have difficulties is is another part of the family.

SPEAKER_05 12:10

So So in in that school period you you taught out from teachers and your mum being a teacher, were there any teachers in that primary school period now this is pushing your memory back probably that stood out or you really loved and inspired you?

SPEAKER_00 12:24

Uh uh Mr. O'Connell was really strict and got a lot out of us. He especially maths, I like maths and he uh did lots of tricks with us to get us stronger at maths.

SPEAKER_05 12:35

Maths was interesting. And and in a sense you've you it's quite interesting because people who have got uh parents as teachers, when they come home from school, there's an expectation that you would continue your learning perhaps at home or not.

SPEAKER_00 12:49

Get outside and play. Outside. Outside and play. Yes. We were outside children.

SPEAKER_05 12:55

And was and in a sense was the was Canberra and Cook a a a lovely environment and a safe environment for young kids at that stage?

SPEAKER_00 13:02

Yes, it was wonderful. We I'm staying with my brother currently and re we were recalling what he was required to do once mum went to work. He would have been six and he had to wheel his two-year-old brother for the babysitter in Macquarie, come back to the house, pick up his school bag and come to cook school. So yeah, it's very safe.

SPEAKER_05 13:25

Very safe, all right. So then you you've so you've been in school, you loved your maths, you had a great strict math teacher. So you then went to high school. Was high school what was the local high school that you went to?

SPEAKER_00 13:38

High school was a choice. Mum gave me a choice what I want to do. And I had three brothers. I I wanted to go to a girl's school. And so uh went to at the time it was called Braddon Catholic High School, it's now called Michi College. And I couldn't have asked for a better learning environment.

SPEAKER_05 14:01

And so you've gone from a carwitz school to a singular sex school. You get day one. Was it what you expected?

SPEAKER_00 14:09

Um lots of girls. Um school no, because every school then wore school uniform, even the local government schools, so not really. And it was a very large group, it was hundred and se hundred and fifty of us. Or a lot of us were new, from pulled from different parts of Canberra, so it wasn't difficult to make friends.

SPEAKER_05 14:30

And so you're in this school and it's a Catholic school?

SPEAKER_00 14:33

Catholic girls' school.

SPEAKER_05 14:34

And were your mum and dad Catholics, or was this an opportunity to go to a a much more structured school?

SPEAKER_00 14:39

Yeah, it's mum and dad were Catholics, but um and they both passed away now. So it's easier to speak. Um but um Lose Rose's kind of lost that on the way.

SPEAKER_05 14:51

So you gone to a an all uh all girls' school, a Catholic school, and you you loved your mass from primary school. Well there now you were starting to get an opportunity to be specific about your subjects that you might want to learn. What was your first impressions of what you wanted to do in the first year at high school?

SPEAKER_00 15:13

At that time up you didn't get any choice really until year eleven. That at that n year n year seven, ten was very fixed. You could you could choose to focus on a language after year seven and I chose Latin. But the choices were French, German or Latin. And I thought Latin might be useful. And Australia is such a big wonderful huge country, I'll never go to France or Germany. Um for chose Latin.

SPEAKER_05 15:43

And maths still a an interest to you?

SPEAKER_00 15:45

Yeah, I loved maths. We and we had one of my m you know, role model teachers, Don Hardy, he ran the Australian Maths Competition inspirational because he just made the math so practical. When we're learning about odds, it was learning about gambling. He was very clear what you were, you know, sure sure you want to place that bet. Um he recalled his stories of British Leyland which went bankrupt. So he he could really pr make practical examples of maths.

SPEAKER_05 16:16

And thinking about where your career went, and we'll talk about that later on in part two, being in in a science sphere. Was science at all becoming of interest to you at that point, or did that come later?

SPEAKER_00 16:28

No, I like I liked I liked really everything, but I wasn't very good at history and English.

SPEAKER_05 16:34

Mm-hmm. Why is that?

SPEAKER_00 16:36

Didn't read enough book.

SPEAKER_05 16:38

Why because you th uh that wasn't the sort of thing that was um pushed at home, or you just want you were more interested in numbers. And sport. And sport. And what was the sport that you were engaging with now at high school?

SPEAKER_00 16:50

Oh, I did l I did quite a lot. I've got three brothers. It was chase us, keep up with us, or they've got no playmates. So that was good. That was very good to have that chase factor. So I played in the represented ACP in the under 16 netball cross country. And later spent a lot more time swimming a lot.

SPEAKER_05 17:12

And that and that was supported in the school, they had good coaches in that area?

SPEAKER_00 17:17

Oh, they was it A C D had a good out of school sport system. So it was yeah, we played at school, but most of the netball and cross country was out of school.

SPEAKER_05 17:28

Now were there other teachers you you talked about your maths teacher and his ability to normalize maths as part of life. Were there any other teachers in that period that were influencing you or inspiring you at any in any form?

SPEAKER_00 17:43

Uh I loved PE, so I was in love with the P teacher, whoever it was, didn't matter. Uh we had Marion Zuch, who was a very very tall, smiley, independent young woman at the time, and she was all into give everything a go, which is a good good way to look at sport. Chemistry. We had some we had we had good we had we had very good str strong science and maths and English even if I didn't like it, and religious education. We did non-Christian religions, other Christian religions. We went to visit the different places of worship around Canberra, so for a for a s for the uh seventies. But growing up in the seventies it was a very open curriculum for a Catholic girl's school.

SPEAKER_05 18:35

Yeah, well that's interesting 'cause I was gonna I was gonna ask you what uh if if if being at a at a uh religious school would have perhaps influenced the nature and the way that science was taught, but you're suggesting that it was a broad church of of knowledge and not necessarily narrowed by faith?

SPEAKER_00 18:54

The science was um unrestricted. And we also were encouraged to present the Pope's views on contraception and discuss the different forms of contraception without roadblocks. I think the religious studies were very I uh deep down I think they helped a lot. I still remember coming out of some I was quite an awkward person. I didn't I could sort of move between friendship groups fairly easily, sports groups easily. So not a bit awkward. So um we had a subject called I don't know what it was called, but I just remember coming out of that term block with the main part of the teaching, I am a limited edition of one. So yeah, if you're a bit awkward and you accept you are who I who you are, then you can go on. It was all right to be different, which I think for a teenager was a good good piece, a good seed.

SPEAKER_05 20:00

So now you're in here say we're looking at your last two years. In the seventies you would have been in year eleven and twelve, or or the finished just in the eight. In the eighties, right. So now you're looking at specifics in the last two years at at high school, now college, you have an opportunity to very much focus on subjects that may help you with your future career or your future decisions. Were you changing I know you talked about Latin and you loved l maths. Were you focusing on any other subjects in those two years that you thought might help in any future direction you might take?

SPEAKER_00 20:36

We you had to do English and maths even in it was the olden days. You didn't there wasn't a big choice, a bit like the baccalaureate, current baccalaureate yet. So I just did more maths and science and I dropped history and art.

SPEAKER_05 20:55

And art. Why why why drop art? I mean that that's a lot of it.

SPEAKER_00 20:58

I like art. I like art and I I really like where I currently am, the weaving that the women create really special and something they can earn a bit of money from and time.

SPEAKER_05 21:10

Time. So now you've you're getting towards the most important part in your life about making your decisions. What did your mum and dad want you to do when you got to the end of end of your c or what end of the high school period, the senior high school period?

SPEAKER_00 21:27

They didn't want me to do anything in particular. They were supportive of my choices and I made a very weird choice to swim. So I went to university part-time at ANU, Maths and Science, and swam six hours a day at the Deacon Health Bar. There was a club, Early Griffithum Club. We had a very good coach, Bill Robinson, and tried my hardest to get to the Commonwealth Games and I didn't make it. Get you had to get first and second. The girls who won the race that I was interested in got first and second at the Commonwealth Games. Um, I came fourth by a hundredth of a second and that really crushed me. So that was a big so I had one year part-time trying to do the swimming thing and you know, coming into it the sport probably a bit late, but um giving it my best shot and my best shot wasn't good enough. And that really m gave me a rethink of what am I doing with my life, where am I going.

SPEAKER_05 22:35

You mentioned before that you mentioned university here in Canberra and also up in Brisbane. Sydney. It's Sydney, sorry, it's Sydney. So how long did you stay at the ANU before you moved to Sydney?

SPEAKER_00 22:46

One year part-time, one year full time, and then I said to Mum, I don't know what I'm gonna do with this science degree 'cause I don't So very funny. Life changes and your views on life change and things that you want change. I said I d I don't she was an excellent teacher, so I didn't want to teach, couldn't she was so good I didn't think I could be as good as she was. I didn't want to work in a lab, wasn't keen to work in an office. I said, I d I don't so I don't know what I'm gonna do with this science degree. So we talked about physiotherapy and she pushed a little bit now. She said, I think you could do better, why don't you try for medicine? I said I'll never get in. But I got straight in to Sydney. Sydney takes transferring students at that time. Out of a hundred and fifty they take three. I I applied first choice at New South Wales 'cause someone from the swimming club was there. No logic to the choice. But they only take internal transfers from within New South Wales Uni. So Sydney Uni took me and went from there.

SPEAKER_05 23:50

Okay. In part two we'll talk more about the university and where that led you. But before we go into part two, would you like to introduce your second track? Who is the performer and why did you select it?

SPEAKER_00 24:01

It's Sia, and the song is titanium. Um I had a big accident and now I have a lot of titanium, which was one of the reasons. But actually, Sia talks about her own the song's about her own anxieties and how she pushes through them. So, in terms of mental health, for all those young people out there, it's normal and you can push through. So the song's very empowering to get through your own, to struggle through your own things.

SPEAKER_05 28:39

Well it's a m it's a memory jogger, but it's gonna we're now gonna take you on your journey as a medical professional. Now you said you were at the School of Medicine at the Sydney University. Now what was that like? Was that what you expected when you walked in the door first day studying medicine? Was that a complete shock or was it what you expected?

SPEAKER_00 29:01

Oh, awkward came back. Awkward came back. There was so I was a bit older than everyone else, and most people were from Sydney, so uh I didn't recognise anybody. Um I felt a bit awkward. So took and they were all very, very clever. Very clever.

SPEAKER_05 29:22

And did you think that you weren't as clever as that group?

SPEAKER_00 29:25

Not as clever.

SPEAKER_05 29:25

What was that?

SPEAKER_00 29:27

Family tradition.

SPEAKER_05 29:29

English background?

SPEAKER_00 29:32

No, I think it probably bought to us that we that you just get on with things and you yeah, I don't know where it comes from, but we're not people who put ourselves forward.

SPEAKER_05 29:44

Now you you would have had a number of uh professors, lecturers there through that period of time. Were there anyone of that group that stood out and perhaps white?

SPEAKER_00 29:56

I might mention a friend who's passed away. Around about third or fourth year I we did psychiatry and I thought, I really don't want to do this. I didn't like psychiatry, barely got through it. Wasn't feeling very good about myself, quit uni. I deferred. Um I guess I'd been at uni for five years. I had not a piece of paper to show for it, had trouble getting a job. I got a job in Sydney City Town as the office junior, making coffee and photocopies and then spent three or four months there, then got another job in accounting for Qantas with no piece of paper. Friends. I only got the job because friends volunteered me. And I was very, very low and one friend passed away um from an accident and I really owe her my life. So so I've never looked back since she passed and kind of owe it to her to do the most that I can.

SPEAKER_05 31:07

So we' we'll we'll park that bit because you I can see you're emotional and someone must have made had a fantastic and enduring impact on you. But what was it that passing and the strength that you gained from that, eventually, I'm assuming, that brought you back to medicine?

SPEAKER_00 31:26

I couldn't get a job. I couldn't So the accounting the accounting thing ended up being a research position. So the first day Bob was showing them me the things I had to do. Let's call him Tom, showing me the things I had to do, and about half an hour into it I said, but how do you know that we haven't already done that? We were paying bills, we were paying large thousands of dollar bills. And he said, I don't know. So I said, Um, who can tell us? So went round to different parts of the office and eventually realised that the first invoice, second invoice, third invoice, and final invoice had all been paid. So Qantas was overpaying, so my job became backtracking to reclaim the overpaid amounts. So and that job could have gone on forever, and they asked me to stay, and I said no, I'm I'm going back to uni. So I was very cognisant of the opportunity I had if I could finish medical school. I went back much more committed, much more committed to getting through.

SPEAKER_05 32:30

And in in medicine you can go down certain disciplines. At what point or did you in your training decide to go down certain a certain discipline of medical practice?

SPEAKER_00 32:43

Hm, so I was I love sport. I thought I'll do sports medicine. So I took more orthopaedic type options and I didn't fit the crowd. You needed a certain dad, a certain tie, a certain football uniform. I had none of that. So I thought this isn't going to and I was female. It at that time it wasn't welcoming. So I talked to some different people and they said, Oh, you might you might find your fi it you might find j Darwin. Darwin's looking for doctors, maybe Darwin. Yeah, all right. So I went up to Darwin. That was good advice. The person who encouraged me to go, and you must have known me better than I knew myself. And Darwin was great. A lot of third world medicine in a first world setting.

SPEAKER_05 33:30

Now can I come back just a little bit before we go back to Darwin? Did where did you have to do your internship as part of part of your education?

SPEAKER_00 33:38

Internship was Royal Prince Alfred and Liverpool in Western Sydney.

SPEAKER_05 33:42

And what was that like? Because a lot of people come out of univers with a perceived way they're going to deal with patients.

SPEAKER_00 33:48

I think I just had great mentors not in orthopedics, but in every other in every you ro they rotate you through different uh well, my first job was nights and it's the d only job that nobody wants to start with. They only take four and that was another thing that I thought, mm, maybe Sydney University, maybe Royal Prince Alfred Hospital's not really keen to have me here, even though they say you know, it could have happened to anyone. So nights was hugely challenging, but the last bit of your medical course you get to do they call it an option perm at that time, and I went to New Zealand, the north of the North Island, there's a tiny town called Kitaya, and the hospital there was run by two South African physicians, and they welcomed me, they taught me so much. I just learnt everything that I needed to know to be a good intern, uh hands-on practical things from those two gentlemen, and um that it made the nights was okay, nights was okay, whereas a lot of people was kind of crack.

SPEAKER_05 34:52

So there's always an important element people call it bedside manner, other people call it engaging with their patients. What elements did you learn at you know, you might have learnt the medical side. Do they also engage with how to deal with the patient?

SPEAKER_00 35:07

Um, that part of yes, that that well they were trained in difficult parts of South Africa, the slum areas, so they brought a lot of that grace with them and in that part of New Zealand you have a lot of Maori patients. So listening and determination were two skills I took away from that. So we not everyone speaks the same as us, so you have to listen harder. L listen harder. So there was one story with a lady who had a pain in her abdomen and she'd had many operations and the surgeon was very reluctant to re-enter that abdomen. And eventually it came to the point where we had to and I was his assistant and he we couldn't find the cause. We were there for hours, but we found the cause. Only through his absolute dogged persistence, he found a a fish bone that had pierced the gut and uh eventually when she woke up, Oh yes, I remember. I remember that choking on the fishbone. So he he just wouldn't give up. It was we were tired, we're standing there, our backs were breaking, but he just wouldn't give up. He knew he had to find it and he showed me you can So you talked about going to Darwin.

SPEAKER_05 36:22

What year was that when you went to Darwin?

SPEAKER_00 36:24

Ninety one ninety-one.

SPEAKER_05 36:27

And what was your expectation when you arrived there? Because Darwin is probably one of the backmost backward in a sense of being funded distant and has lots of different cultures and perhaps has very, very high First Nations culture there, which may or may not have been in those days accepted. What was it like?

SPEAKER_00 36:52

Oh well, awkwardness didn't matter now. It just fits f seemed to fit straight in. And maybe everyone who goes there is a bit has their own awkwardness. So it does attract different people. It's an extraordinary landscape and the people are also very extraordinary. So um I loved it. I learnt everything, pediatric, substantic, drug and alcohol. There was a a man called Wren Murray, a reformed alcoholic who you could join him at five o'clock in the morning, he took out his it's called Wren's bus, took out took out his bus and he revived all the people who'd been drinking all night, um, cleaned up their wounds, gave them vegemical peanut butter sandwiches which stopped them getting brain damage from alcohol, tea or coffee. Just a brilliant, cheap life sa you know, very preventative type of concept.

SPEAKER_05 37:41

Did you learn when you were up there uh people have perhaps a a different perspective of First Nation cultures and perhaps are on a very steep learning curve going into that environment? What was the key lessons that you learnt in your period at Darwin Hospital about engaging with First Nations people?

SPEAKER_00 38:02

I s I s I see an Aboriginal man walking around, going to the window, coming back, going to the window, coming back. I was just travelling between floors and I said, I just went up, are you okay? He goes, I'm looking for the sky. He couldn't get out of the building. So we can we can so he so I don't know if that's something that I normally do. Uh look and listen. I think looking and listening and not talking is really a useful skill.

SPEAKER_05 38:34

Yeah, because some people talk about white person white people's medicine and First Nations medicine. Was there a combination of that at all in your experience in Darwin Hospital, or was it just purely first na you know, white people's medicine and that was it?

SPEAKER_00 38:51

Aboriginal people especially don't want to be in hos an air conditioned hospital. Um one of my first research projects was about hypothermia in Darwin Hospital with Michael Lowe, who's still there today. I think Ren Ren Murray is also passed away now. He he just he taught me a lot about accepting you people are as they are. We don't want them to get sicker. He'd bring in Aboriginal patients, look out for me and say, Can you look after? And it was often an an aboriginal patient who d has something that's borderline have to admit, but maybe if we work together we can keep them out of hospital, so I think you learn from you should learn from the people who who have the experience.

SPEAKER_05 39:40

Alright, so now how long were you up and down what was your next career change and story after Darwin?

SPEAKER_00 39:47

So I thought I will I thought that was my career, that's where I will be for life and was working towards having the skills to do that. So you need the very general skill set, y you need the orthopedics, obstetrics, um being able to fly somebody in an aeroplane if they've got a lung disease. You will have to deliver a baby. That petrified me. So I made myself do the obstetric training in Darwin. I had this little little bug, not a big bug, but I just wanted to go to Africa for six months first before I settled. Um, someone said, Before you go to Africa you better do tropical medicine. Oh yeah, good idea. So I ended up at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, the oldest in the world where they had blood samples stored for a long time that they discovered the HIV virus when they looked back later. And it was also close to where mum and dad had grown up. So it was quite a nice niche to do tropical medicine. After that I didn't get to Africa, I ended up in Asia.

SPEAKER_05 40:56

What took you to Asia?

SPEAKER_00 40:58

I tried to I went to visit a friend uh who just had a baby in Oxford. Her husband had won a scholarship to study for three years. Very brilliant man, Miles Davenport, he's at New South Wales uni. But I went to see his wife, Helen, and he kept saying, Oh, you should come, there's a meeting on you can you might be able to get a job. I said it's okay, I can get a job. So first day, second day, and I was looking for a job and actually struggling, and on the third to get a six month job. For some reason I had I could support myself for six months. I didn't need anyone to support me, I could volunteer for six months. And so on the third day he said, Look, I lined up some people for you to meet. So good on him, um, because it's not something I would have done myself. Too shy. So he helped me out and I met some people and one of them said they were desperate for someone with obstetrics, which I'd only done out of desperation myself, and um and that's why I got the job at Choclo Malaria Research Unit in the refugee camp at the time, Myanmar border.

SPEAKER_05 42:04

And well that was your first introduction to that part of the world.

SPEAKER_00 42:08

Very much.

SPEAKER_05 42:08

Very much. How long did you stay there for?

SPEAKER_00 42:10

I s well I said I'll do the six months. What do you want? I don't need anything. What vaccines do I need? Um But otherwise um at the I was coming back from my brother's wedding. At the end of six months, there was sort of a sitting on the s sitting on the steps of a bamboo building having a little discussion about oh, do you like here? Yes. Would you come back? Uh do you want me back? That was with my current Oscar. Um so I went back.

SPEAKER_05 42:41

And so after Myanmar you came back to to Australia or not?

SPEAKER_00 42:45

Came for my brother's wedding and then went back to the border. And at that time we we did work in Myanmar. We'd we'd worked both sides of the border. Wherever the Karen control territory was, it was very easy to do medical care on the other side of the border. Um and then within the refugee camps. There's internally displaced on the Myanmar side and refugee camps on the Thai side. But until now, Thailand hasn't signed the 1956 ref UN Refugee Convention. They they prefer to call them displaced people's camps. Um and with the withdrawal of USAID, they are now in trouble with those camps because it's landed in their court completely. How to care for 140,000 people in camps.

SPEAKER_05 43:31

Now you so you've been over there. Did you come back to Australia to start working back in Australia or do you've continued working overseas?

SPEAKER_00 43:38

Uh dive deeply into mal so antenatal clinics, births, malaria. Medicine for non pregnant people wasn't working. So there was a vaccine study, there were medical and studies on medicines, and pregnant women were just left behind, left behind, left behind. Um we got taught by Eileen Cross. Cossa at um sorry McCready, I've forgotten her first name at Sydney Uni, who did the work on thalidomide. She was one of our teachers. Janet McCready. So undertaking work on pregnancy was every time we gave the drug that we weren't meant to use 'cause nobody knew that you knew anything about it, we were scared. But we followed that pregnancy very closely until we saw the baby and we followed that baby up until one year of life to see it's develop normally. And with it within the space of a few years we realized this medicine, we should be using this medicine, we shouldn't be withholding it because it's working, it's effective, and everybody's okay, which wasn't what they understood from the animal studies.

SPEAKER_05 44:48

You continued working in that part of the world over for how long? And you're now running a foundation. How did that evolve?

SPEAKER_00 45:02

So Shock Low Millary Research is research unit is under Mahidal Oxford Research Unit, which is a collaboration between Large University in Bangkok and Oxford in the UK, and it's research oriented. As Myanmar has had yet another coup, the humanitarian work, the withdrawal of USAID, the humanitarian work has taken on a bigger component and research money can't pay for that. So the foundation is very much mother-child health oriented to support those most in need, with no we can use the framework of Chocolate Millera Research Unit to get money directly to without loss of money. There's no we're not paying HR because we have our own human resource side. So the money's money that donated in Australia is used in full, apart from bank transfer, uh with border mums and babies.

SPEAKER_05 46:06

And you're dealing in a country where you've got and you may not want to be able to answer this very in detail, but there's been a lot of issues around about facilitating um health and uh support for people where you're dealing with governments that may or may not be supportive of the action. Have you had much to have had difficulties working through the various governments and systems that you need to get through to get your to deliver your services that you're trying to achieve?

SPEAKER_00 46:40

So there's different provinces in Thailand and most of the refugees are in a single province and their health ends up being under the control of TARC, public health, a branch of Thailand public health. And um we partner strongly with them. They say there's a lot of malaria here, we say where and we go and help sort it out. And Thai language and Myanmar language are very different. The script is different, the sounds are different. To have someone who speaks both of those is quite unusual. Uh and to have Myanmar and Burmese language, Thai language and English is even more rare. Plus most of the people we work with are Karen, another language who have two dialects. So it's hard for Thailand to look after Myanmar people a lot because of what simple thing, language.

SPEAKER_05 47:36

And so you've got you've got a number of uh people. How many people are working in the in the foundation?

SPEAKER_00 47:43

Nobody's directly in the foundation, doesn't um no one's directly in the foundation, but the foundation will support some people's salaries. For example, m we recently got a donor and that donor will support thirteen midwives for by near four months, which is great, 'cause we run four delivery rooms, they run twenty-four hours, so they need staff. You can't no AI delivery yet.

SPEAKER_05 48:09

Mm-hmm. Now a lot of organizations are finding it difficult to send staff uh doctors out borders now s re now ref not letting their staff go to certain regions of the world. You're not experiencing that difficulty in that part of the world.

SPEAKER_00 48:25

Our priority is that local st when I die, when I leave, it's no point if I take everything, all my knowledge with me. I need people on the ground to do it. So a big emphasis of our work is teach the best we can to local staff to be able to carry on to be able to do it. So I'm not there, I can't be in four delivery rooms twenty-four hours a day. I need people who know what they're doing. So I I need to teach them how to do a safe vacuum extraction for the baby. They need to know how to do that without me.

SPEAKER_05 49:01

So Rose, where would you like the foundation to be in say ten years' time? Where what direction do you want to take it to? Or you're happy where where it is going at the moment.

SPEAKER_00 49:23

And that doesn't um I I don't want to negate, you know, that ten dollars from somebody is already great. And maybe for them it's huge. So sm every little bit helps, but for the for most Myanmar people they want to go home and we also like to see them home. But in the interim and I think a lot of Australians currently don't want to see any of them in Australia. So how can you support these people to live, to survive, and they really are eking out livings from unbelievably low amounts of sort? How can we best help them at home?

SPEAKER_05 50:07

Probably lastly, in a sense, you've had lots of experiences over there. Perhaps what's been the most memorable and the most life-changing experience you've had in that environment?

SPEAKER_00 50:18

I can give you sad examples and happy examples, but I won't go for happy. Most of our work is happy. We had twins that didn't look like they were going to deliver, so we ended up doing a transfer in the car. And during the transfer we'd stopped the car, we ended up delivering on the side of the road. Some Thai people came out and brought some buckets of water, you know, did their best. Both babies survived. And that mum, when I met her about two months later, brought me a pumpkin.

SPEAKER_05 50:54

And on that note, Rose, would you like to introduce your last track? Who is the performer and why did you select it?

SPEAKER_00 51:02

This is Bill Withers, and it's Lean on Me and friends from Canberra, friends from Sydney Uni, friends from Darwin, friends from the Thai Myanmar border. Sometimes we need you. I need you. That's what it's about, helping each other out.

SPEAKER_05 51:20

Well, on that note, thank you very much for being a guest on the Confab with Michael G.

SPEAKER_04 51:52

Same and the last we all have things. Lean on me when you're not be your friend, and if you temper don't let me only that you only show you just call on the brother when you need a hand. We don't need somebody to leave. I just make help from that you understand. We don't need somebody to leave We don't understand and I'll be your friend. I'll help you embrace it who won't be laughing. Somebody to leave You just call on the brother when you need a hand. We don't need somebody to leave. I just might have a problem letting you understand. We all need somebody to live. If you need free, ever need me, and if you need free me, am me, and me