Dr Maurice King

The following tribute has been written by Dr King's wife, Felicity Savage King.   

Colleagues and particularly those who were former students, will be sorry to learn of the death on 18th of August, 2024, of Maurice King, formerly Reader in the Department of Community Medicine and General Practice, at the University of Leeds.

Maurice came to Leeds in 1986 to join the recently founded course to train doctors and other health workers from overseas including developing countries, in public health. This was his last academic appointment before retirement, and he brought with him unique and extensive experience of working in different countries and situations for the previous 30 years.

Maurice qualified in medicine from Cambridge and  St Thomas’s Hospital, and started to specialise as a pathologist. He undertook a research project in TB in Zambia, (then Northern Rhodesia), and then moved to Uganda, to work in the pathology laboratory of Makere University medical school. During that time he came to know Peter Cox, working as a medical missionary, and who later joined the same Department of Community Medicine in Leeds.

When Peter became ill, Maurice became his locum at his rural hospital, Amudat, and there he developed an amazing insight into the lack of written, printed knowledge about the management of health care in remote situations with limited resources. He realised that the vital skills of people experienced in working there were insufficiently recorded or made easily available to others.

Maurice returned to Makere and held a Conference of such skilled people, and from the practical information he developed a book called "Medical Care in Developing Countries" - A primer on the medicine of poverty., which was published in 1966, and became world famous within a year, and widely used in medical schools all over the world. Maurice gradually realised that while he lacked the practical knowledge, he had the skill to write it down, and he started to work with the experts and write down their desperately needed knowledge. He called himself a "knowledge engineer".

In 1966 he was recruited as the first faculty member of the Zambian medical school, as Professor of Social Medicine, and while there wrote Nutrition for Developing Countries, which was very popular. In 1972 he joined WHO and worked in Surabaya, Indonesia and developed a project including the book Primary Child Care. This contributed to the concept of Primary Care overall, and the use of a basic form of English which is valuable both for translators, and other people for whom it is a second language.

In 1979 Maurice was recruited to move to Kenya supported by GTZ (German Aid), and to develop a set of three books on Primary Surgery - on Anaesthesia, Trauma, and Non-trauma - of which there are very few simple, practical equivalents. The books were based on the knowledge of several skilled surgeons collaborating with Maurice. They have proved of great use to doctors  who work in isolated situations and have to take care of any patients who present. The doctors often tell amazing stories of what they achieve by practising using the text and accompanying illustrations.

The final book that Maurice undertook was "Primary Mother Care and Population", when he became very concerned about population increase. The work was undertaken after he retired from Leeds University, voluntarily, and with the help of an international team of experts, some of whom have subsequently taken the book into an updated second edition. This has been published by Practical Action, to keep the cost of the book very low for health workers in low income countries.

Maurice had a remarkable life and made a great contribution to medicine globally. He was made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, perhaps uniquely for a doctor who only ever did major surgery on one patient, who died when no one else was available. But many other patients treated by the books survived, and more than made up for the unfortunate loss.

The funeral service will be held at St Michael's and All Angels, Headingley, Leeds, on Tuesday 10th September at 2.00 pm, on which day the flag on the Parkinson Building will be flown at half-mast in his memory.  Family flowers only. Donations, if desired, should be directed to Leeds Hospitals Charity towards the Rob Burrow Motor Neurone Disease Care Centre in Leeds.