From: Biniam Tekle (biniamt@dehai.org)
Date: Mon Jul 13 2009 - 08:04:33 EDT
"A supporter of the Eritrean liberation struggle throughout the 1980s, in
1989 he made an arduous trip into the liberated areas of northern Eritrea to
study the primary healthcare system of the Eritrean People's Liberation
Front. Travelling by night without lights across the desert to avoid the
attentions of Ethiopian MiG fighter aircraft was an adventure he often spoke
about"
Obituary Ian Gregg
- Andy Gregg
- The Guardian, Wednesday 8 July 2009
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2009/jul/07/obituary-ian-gregg#history-byline>
My father, Ian Gregg, who has died aged 84, made a distinguished
contribution to general practice and the diagnosis and management of asthma
and bronchitis. He lectured at conferences and seminars across the world,
and his facility with languages and ease with different cultures won him
many friends.
By the time he had finished his four years of military service in India and
Malaysia as a lieutenant in the Royal Garhwal Rifles, he had become
conversant in Hindi, Urdu and Garhwali, to which he later added some Russian
and French. He saw active service with his regiment in the Malayan
Emergency, and then returned to the UK to commence medical studies at Oxford
and then Westminster hospital, where he met his wife, Mary.
In 1958 he became both a principal in general practice in Roehampton and a
registrar at the Westminster chest clinic, where he embarked on
groundbreaking work on asthma. Recognition of his work, which bridged
general practice and hospital medicine, came with his appointment as an
honorary consultant at the Brompton hospital's cardiothoracic institute, a
post that he continued alongside his work in general practice - by then in
Kingston upon Thames.
Like many of his contemporaries, he helped build and believed strongly in
the NHS <http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/nhs>. He was a staunch supporter
of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and Amnesty International and an
increasingly critical member of the Labour Party, until his growing despair
with New Labour eventually won out.
In the 1950s he followed his father, Basil, in joining the Society of
Friends, but by the time of his death he had given up even the Quaker's
undogmatic belief in a supreme deity and described himself proudly as an
"agnostic fundamentalist". Somewhat unusually for English men of his
generation, he was a confirmed internationalist who retained very little of
the "Raj mentality" and was blessed with a wide network of friends across
the world of all races and religions. Long after his retirement in 1987, on
regular visits to India, he would delight in travelling by second-class
train while regaling all comers with his by then somewhat antiquated Hindi.
A supporter of the Eritrean liberation struggle throughout the 1980s, in
1989 he made an arduous trip into the liberated areas of northern Eritrea to
study the primary healthcare system of the Eritrean People's Liberation
Front. Travelling by night without lights across the desert to avoid the
attentions of Ethiopian MiG fighter aircraft was an adventure he often spoke
about.
He delighted in his family and died peacefully in Oxford, leaving his body
to medical science. He is survived by Mary, four sons, a daughter and their
families.
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