PENNY DAWSON

When Penny Dawson graduated from Port Perry High School in 1973, everyone predicted a great future for her. A top student and a hard worker with an engaging personality, she entered Waterloo University and graduated with a double honours degree in Biology and Chemistry.

Penny then enrolled in medical school at McMaster University. “During my years in medical school,” she says, “I took every possible opportunity to travel and did electives in Trinidad, Sri Lanka and the UK, as well as northern Ontario. I was pretty sure that I wanted to travel and practice medicine overseas.”
On a sunny Friday in June 1981 she finished her internship and on the following Monday left for Nepal.

The hospital where she began her practice was a small, very rural hospital in the Himalayas. It had been built through assistance and funding provided by Sir Edmund Hillary, one of the first men to conquer Mount Everest. Penny explains, “Sir Ed, as his friends in Nepal refer to him, wanted to give something back to the local people, the Sherpas, and built numerous schools and health posts and two hospitals in the Everest region of Nepal. The place where I worked was Khunde Hospital, which is located in a small village (probably about 50 households then) sitting at an altitude of 12,800 feet above sea level, in the shadow of the world’s most beautiful mountains. A Canadian charity, the Sir Edmund Hillary Foundation, supported us and made this opportunity possible.”

Khunde Hospital had a network of seven village health workers, local people, usually female, who had received basic health training and medical supplies from the hospital. These workers provided first line medical care in their villages. They would refer more severely ill patients to Khunde Hospital.

Some of the villages were just a few hours walk away while others were as far as a two day journey. Penny visited these villages every couple of months and stayed for a few days to see patients with the village health workers, giving advice, medicine and support to the health workers.

“Living and working at Khunde for two years was an amazing experience” Penny says. “I came to really like and appreciate many characteristics of the Nepalese people. They are gentle yet strong, determined yet flexible and smart, although many have not had the opportunity for formal education.”

Penny’s work was the subject of a movie entitled Khunde Hospital which aired on CBC’s ‘The Nature of Things.’ It was part of a series named ‘The Everest Connection.’

Other than two years in Karala in the south of India, Penny has remained in Nepal for her entire medical career. In 1988 Penny moved to the capital city of Nepal, Kathmandu, and began work as the doctor for the Peace Corps.

Two years later she joined a new office, John Snow Inc., a public health research and consulting organization, where she presently works. Here she is an advisor to the government of Nepal, to try to help identify ways to strengthen community-based programs, particularly to improve child health and survival.

When Penny first arrived in Nepal the mortality rate for infants under age 5 was over 200 per 1000 live births. Largely as a result of Penny’s pioneering efforts in developing community-based local health services, the rate has dropped to below 65 per 1000 live births.

Penny is proud to add, “Nepal is one of the few developing countries on track to meet its millennium development goal for reduction in under-five mortality. This is a huge accomplishment, considering the country has just emerged from a 10 year civil war.”

Nepal is one of the first countries in the world where village volunteers have been trained and supported to diagnose and give initial treatment for pneumonia. This programme began in 1995 under the coordination of the WHO, (World Health Organization) UNICEF and USAID (United States Agency for International Development) and was recently written up in the May 2008 WHO Bulletin.

Penny has been invited by numerous health organizations to present her program and its results at Medical Conferences, from Delhi in India to London, New York and Washington. As a result of her efforts she has recently been invited to share this experience and ideas with different African nations. She has travelled to Ethiopia and participated in meetings with representatives from 15 different African countries, to share the success stories from Nepal’s community-based programs and to help them plan similar programs in their own countries. “I hope to continue to be able to help other countries develop confidence in their own community health workers and to develop mechanisms and systems to support them to save lives in their own villages,” she adds.

Penny has two daughters who both attended school in Kathmandu. Her oldest daughter returned to Canada to attend McMaster University.

Penny keeps in touch with several schoolmates from her Port Perry High School days and returns to Canada at least twice a year to visit her 96 year old mother who now lives in Goodwood.

When asked of her fondest recollections of PPHS she offered the following confession, “I have to be honest. I think the best times were watching basketball games and planning events for the student council. I also really liked Tom Allison and Mr. Wallace’s science classes and I think that encouraged me to pursue the sciences (biology and chemistry) at Waterloo.”

Penny Dawson’s work in Nepal is an inspiration to many and is having a profound affect on the lives of so many children.
On a personal note, Penny says she is most proud that the work she has accomplished has contributed to a decrease in the mortality rate for children under five years of age in Nepal.

“I am also happy that I have been able to be an advocate and spokesperson for rural women, encouraging people to invest in their education and training and to believe in the value of their services and their unselfish commitment to improve health,” she concludes.

By Paul Arculus
Focus on Scugog