Harry Hastings

Harry Hastings (c. 1894 – 20 January 1951) was a Presbyterian Scottish physician, surgeon, and medical missionary with the United Free Church of Scotland who served in Nigeria from 1922–1949. Hastings worked primarily at the Uburu Hospital but also in the village of Itu, both in Ogoja Province in Nigeria. Hastings was assisted by his wife, described as a "practical nurse", He also worked with fellow physicians R.M. Macdonald of Scotland and Akanu Ibiam of Nigeria during his time in Uburu. He is known for developing Nigerian staff to run health services without additional foreign missionaries.

Early life and education Hastings was born in Scotland. After military service in Germany in World War I,

Career

Missionary work in Itu A part of the Calabar mission, Hastings began his missionary service in Itu, Nigeria in 1922. Hastings saw over 500 patients in the first few days. However, many in Itu were more trusting of the local healers in the community, leading to a decline in their condition before being seen by Hastings. He left Itu in 1924 and was stationed at Uburu.

Leprosy Hastings began to focus on leprosy in 1928 with the establishment of a "leprosy camp" to treat the epidemic that was sweeping Nigeria in the 1920s and 1930s. He asked the council of the British Medical Journal for permission for land to create a treatment facility (at that time referred to as a "leper colony" in Uburu). Unlike other missionaries, though, he never asked the council for money or for staff. Treatment was with hydnocarpus oil, adopted from traditional practices in India and China. The facility began with seventy patients in 1928, and grew to 200 by 1933. As a result of constructing a second hospital in Osu, a nearby village, Hastings was supervising 532 patients and grew to be called the Ogoja Leprosy Scheme, later named the Southern Ogoja Leprosy Service in 1946.

Besides Hasting's wife and Macdonald, every other position in the hospital or treatment facility was filled by a local trainee. A local man and physician who graduated from the University of St. Andrews, Akanu Ibiam, was tasked with training nurses. Ibiam later became a mission doctor and a president of the World Council of Churches. He died in 1951 after returning to Scotland for medical reasons in 1949.