Henry Fraser's entertaining
autobiography starts with tales of a unique childhood growing up at the local
governance centre of a rural parish in Barbados, where most parishioners
visited the offices of his parents at the family home. This rich community
involvement had a profound influence on his life of service. Sir Henry describes
why he chose to study medicine at the University of the West Indies at Mona, Jamaica,
and so became a passionate West Indian. After specialization and PhD studies in
London, he returned to Barbados and helped to build better health care there. He
promoted rational therapeutics regionally and globally, working with PAHO and
WHO, and his research centre and wide-ranging research have greatly benefited the
Caribbean. His passion for teaching, patient care, mentoring and management
shows throughout the book.
Sir Henry has
been described as the Renaissance man of Barbados: in addition to his
remarkable medical career, he has been public orator for Barbados and for the
University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, and an independent senator in the
Barbados Senate (where he discovered the reasons for the syndrome he labelled
Government's Implementation Deficit Disorder or GIDD). His other lifelong
passions have been art, architectural history and heritage preservation, and
writing. His autobiography makes fascinating reading: he is a natural story
teller and, as he often says, "History is his story." The book is replete with
captivating anecdotes and is illustrated with some of his paintings.
