Michael King: general surgeon who spent 30 years working in Malawi

Michael King had been working as a surgeon in a day care ward in Worthing for two years when he began to get itchy feet. While “the work was rewarding and I was my own boss within limits,” he was yearning for a greater challenge. His wife, Elspeth, and two pre-teen daughters, Fiona and Sheenagh, “would welcome a more adventurous life,” he wrote in his unpublished memoirs.

Elspeth spotted an advertisement in The BMJ for a surgeon at the Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital in Blantyre, the industrial and commercial capital of Malawi. King spoke to the chief surgeon in post, Jan Borgstein. He then consulted Sam Bhima, the first black doctor in Nyasaland, as Malawi was called before independence, who happened to be working at Worthing Hospital. Bhima had been forced to flee his homeland because of his links to Malawi’s opposition and told King about the country’s “difficult political and health situation.”

Malawi had won independence from the British in 1964—12 years before the Kings’ arrival—and was governed by Hastings Kamuzu Banda, a British trained doctor, who had become increasingly repressive. While there had been some investment in the health service since independence, care for the population of five million was patchy. There was a handful of government and privately run hospitals and only around 100 doctors, the …