By Frank Ferris (USA).
Larry Librach, our much beloved friend, colleague, mentor, pioneer and champion of Family Medicine, Palliative Medicine and Bioethics across Canada and internationally, died in his home August 15, 2013. He was surrounded by his loving family and embraced by hundreds of friends throughout his 4.5-month experience of metastatic pancreatic cancer.
We will all remember his joy of life, his laughter and his evocative thoughts as he 'challenged the process,' and all of us throughout life, including:
I recommend you read more about Larry’s accomplishments through:
Please join me to remember and honor Larry, and his family, for giving each of us, and so many others, joy, inspiration and opportunity! I will be delighted to share with Larry’s family any memories you send to me at [email protected].
Frank D. Ferris, MD, FAAHPM, FAACE is the Executive Director of Palliative Medicine, Research & Education, OhioHealth, Columbus, Ohio, USA
Dr. Ferris is a Member of the IAHPC Board. His bio may be found here.
Dr Nell Muirden (1932-2013)
By Roger Woodruff
Dr Nell Muirden, one of the pioneers of palliative care in Australia and Papua New Guinea, and an IAHPC Travelling Fellow in 2001, died in Melbourne in June after a short illness.
Nell graduated from the University of Sydney in 1955. After a year working in rural New South Wales, she set off for the New Hebrides (now Vanuatu) where she worked at the Mission Hospital in Vila for two years. She married Dr John Muirden in 1961 and they moved to Papua New Guinea where they worked for 17 years. Returning to Melbourne in 1978, she worked with Dr Wally Moon in the Pain Clinic at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre and helped establish a palliative care service some years later; this was no mean feat as these were the days when starting a palliative care service anywhere near an oncology unit was an uphill battle. After she retired from Peter Mac, she remained involved in the postgraduate teaching of palliative care at the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Palliative Care.
Papua New Guinea remained one of Nell’s passions and she revisited the country on a number of occasions. She would appear in my office from time to time, smiling, and scoop up any spare copies of the previous editions of Cancer Pain or my AIDS manual, telling me how much more they were needed in Papua New Guinea. My own experiences working in the Chimbu town of Kundiawa in the Central Highlands in the late 1960s left indelible memories of the needs—all the patients presenting with cancer were end-stage and the most important thing was to get them back to their own village to die; and pain was something they had to endure. Nell would have seen a lot more of this than I did, but took it as a challenge, which she pursued in a patient but relentless manner. Her 2001 report <https://hospicecare.com/what-we-do/programs/traveling-fellowship/reports/2001-papua-new-guinea-nell-muirden/ > is a good example of how she went about it—you talk to the people on the ground to find out what’s really going on and teach them what you can, then the hospital administrators, then the responsible people in the public service, even members of parliament, and then you keep at them and keep at them until some improvements are made. As the concepts of palliative care matured, Nell saw it as something Papua New Guinea needed and could afford, but she was under no illusion about the enormity of the change needed. The development of health care in Papua New Guinea still rates poorly, but it would have been that much further behind but for the work of devoted souls like Nell Muirden.
Dr Roger Woodruff, Australia
Dr Muirden was not only one of the first IAHPC members but a lifelong member.
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