Saving Lives and Preventing Misery - the memoirs of Sir John Crofton

April 2013

Professor Sir John Crofton (1912-2009) patron of BNMT for 25 years was one of the outstanding physicians of the 20th century.  He led the pioneering medical team that first established that tuberculosis could be cured by combination chemotherapy (the Edinburgh method).  He was also a prominent public health campaigner who did much to change public and political attitudes towards tobacco smoking.

His memoirs describe his childhood years, his student days and climbing holidays, his war years in the RAMC, his radical approach to the treatment of TB, his roles as Edinburgh University Vice-Principal and President of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, and finally his extensive public health campaigns waged after his retirement from medical practice.

These autobiographical recollections provide fascinating insights into the social and political history of the last century: a child's view of disturbing episodes during "The Troubles" in an otherwise idyllic Anglo-Irish upbringing; student life in 1930s Cambridge, when students were forbidden to visit pubs and women were segregated from men at lectures; the horrors of pre-NHS hospital medicine; a unique anecdotal account of serving in World War II, witnessing a mixture of incompetence and heroism; his work as a medical professor in the 1950s discovering a 100% cure for TB which at first others were reluctant to believe; and a lively account of the years of student unrest, when rector Malcolm Muggeridge, who denounced students as depraved wretches, was followed by a student rector, Gordon Brown, who later became a UK Prime Minister.

The book is edited by Dr David C Kilpatrick, a retired immunologist and a son-in-law of John Crofton.  He is an author or editor of several books and many medical research papers including studies on respiratory diseases.

You can order the book, at a price of £18, online (ISBN 978-178035-541-2) from www.fast-print.net/bookshop or write to :

FastPrint Publishing, 9 Culley Court, Bakewell Road, Orton Southgate, Peterborough, PE2 6XD

Everest Marathon again raises funds for BNMT

March 2013

Since 1987 the Everest Marathon, the World's highest marathon, has been run every two years.  One of the aims of the event was to raise money for charities working in the poorer parts of Nepal.  Over the years they have raised a considerable amount of money through both sponsors of the event and those of the individual runners.  From the beginning BNMT has been the grateful recipient of a great deal of funds which have been used towards:

• Traineeships for Nepali employees

• The cost sharing drug scheme in Taplejung

• Rebuilding the TB hostel at Khandbari

• The cost sharing drug scheme in Khotang

• A new vehicle for transporting essential drugs to district hospitals

• The cost of training on the rational use of drugs

• Microscopes for the TB programme and a solar battery back up

• Repair of the TB hostels in Taplejung and Dhankuta

• A drug weighing machine for the drug store

• Purchase of motorbikes and office equipment for the TB programme

• New vehicles including a Landcruiser

• Display screens for presentations

• A computer networking system

• A new generator

The latest marathon, run in 2011, raised £9,000 for the Trust which has been used to upgrade the TB laboratory in Biratnagar where smear tests taken from patients are tested for TB.  As you will see from the first photograph the laboratory was in dire need of this upgrade.

The upgrade has now been completed and the laboratory provided with new microscopes, a computer, printer and projector.

For more information about the Everest Marathon go to their website www.everestmarathon.org.uk

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