QIMR Berghofer Launch of Don McManus Tropical Health Research Centre

QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute Director & CEO, Professor Fabienne Mackay, Deputy Director and Chief Scientist, Professor Grant Ramm and Council Members; Program Director, Don McManus Tropical Health Research Centre, Professor Darren Gray; wife of the late Professor Don McManus, Mrs Hawys McManus; distinguished guests; ladies and gentlemen.      

I begin by acknowledging the Original Custodians of the lands around Brisbane, the Turrbal and Jagera people, and pay my respects to Elders past, present and emerging, and any First Nations people with us this evening.

As Patron of the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute and our State’s former Chief Health Officer, I already had two very good reasons to accept the invitation to be with you today to officially open the Don McManus Tropical Health Research Centre.

But I also had a third reason – the connection between the work of this research centre and one of my great predecessors as Governor of Queensland, Sir William MacGregor.

Sir William was both a doctor and a colonial administrator, and had spent 13 years in Fiji, a decade in New Guinea, and five years in Nigeria before being appointed as our 11^th Governor.

In each of those roles, he had seen, firsthand, the impact of tropical diseases and, by the time the Liverpool and London Schools of Tropical Medicine were established at the end of the 19^th century, he had become a passionate advocate for the improved diagnosis and treatment of diseases such as malaria and dysentery.

MacGregor’s commitment continued when he arrived in Queensland in 1909 and became aware of the long-running campaign by the Anglican clergyman and missionary, Bishop Frodsham, to establish an institute for the study of tropical diseases in north Queensland.

Sir William shared Frodsham’s concern that trainee doctors were receiving inadequate practical instruction about tropical diseases, and was proud to officially open the Australian Institute of Tropical Medicine in Townsville during his term of office.

He would have been equally proud and pleased to see the establishment of QIMR in 1945 and to see it develop the reputation that enabled it to attract a researcher of the calibre of Don McManus.

I think he would also join me in applauding the decision to name this centre in Don’s honour.

During my career as a medical administrator, I was well aware of Don’s outstanding research into neglected tropical diseases, his determination to eliminate them, and his international reputation as a parasitologist.

Equally, I was also aware of his inspirational leadership and the valued support he gave fellow scientists as a mentor, colleague and friend, so it is particularly pleasing to see that, in naming this new centre, QIMR Berghofer has chosen not to use his professorial title or his full given name because he was always, simply and humbly, Don McManus, ‘a person of the people’.[5]

This centre is a fine tribute to a man whose work has made a difference to the lives of millions of people around the world, and it now gives me great pleasure to officially declare open the Don McManus Tropical Health Research Centre.