Michael Elmore-Meegan - Career

Career

Aged twenty, he went to Kenya where he began to work with Dr Robbie McCabe in Turkana after being in Karamoja in Uganda. He then expended his work into sections of northern Mogadishu in Somalia interested in infant health and nutirition. He began to work among the Maasai people to address village devastated by diseases such as malaria and tuberculous. He established ICROSS in Ireland with Dr Joe Barnes MD, a Papal Knight and the pioneer of Tropical Medicine in Ireland. In Kenya ICROSS evolved with the help of the Irish Holy Ghost Fathers and personal friends, Meegan created one of the largest networks of primary health services among pastoral nomads in East Africa. By 1986 with the support of the Director of Medical services, Dr Wilfred Koinange, ICROSS had established community health programmes in 6 locations across four districts in Kenya. His early work in growth monitoring, child survival and neonatal tetanus was widely cited within the primary health care community. By 1989 Meegan had launched a series of studies into belief systems and cultural structures that impacted health care.

He worked in small rural communities mostly among southern Nilotic pastoral nomads . Between 1983 - 1997 he spent most of his life among Tanzanian and Kenyan Maasai and Samburu tribal communities.

A long-time friend of Wilfred Thesiger, he worked closely with traditional Samburu. He spent over twenty years collecting ethnographic and ethnomedical data, recording language and tribal artifacts and writing about cultural belief systems. In the mid 1980s he adopted two Kenyans; Lemoite Lemako and Saruni OleKoitee OleLengeny, later to become assistant CEO of ICROSS Kenya. ICROSS was designed as a model for community owned locally driven development planning.

His work extended into reproductive health and eventually AIDS. Under Meegan's leadership, ICROSS worked with a number of other organizations on a Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland led project, to develop a Solar water disinfection system that could be used by village households. He pioneered the concept of community ownership in community health services, campaigning for long term public health policies, planning in local languages and working through local cultures. His close friends include Wilfred Thesiger and Profeeor David Morley. His supporters have ranged from Sean McBride, Son of Maude Gonne to Fr John Powell SJ.

He is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Medicine of Ireland, and the East African Association of Anthropology; Senior Research fellow at the Centre of Culture and Development Baroda, Gujarat, and a Lions Melvin Jones Fellow. In 2008 he received an International Humanitarian award - the "International Angelo della Pace" at the "Premio internazionale Exposcuola per l'impegno civile Italy" from the Rachel Foundation Italy

His work on Diarrhoeal disease in Africa was widely cited and in 2010 he extended his innovations to recycling human waste into biogas.

In the early 2000s, Michael Meegan became a prominent figure in Ireland whose fundraising activities for ICROSS attracted the public support of former Irish Prime Minister Garret FitzGerald and entertainment celebrities such as Elton John, Chris de Burgh, Caroline Corr, and Andrea Corr. His writing and charitable activity brought him Ireland's well-regarded 2003 International Person of the Year Award presented in a nationally televised ceremony by the Irish charity Rehab.

Among many media works on Michael Meegan, in May 2005, Ireland's state owned RTE televised a documentary about Meegan entitled When You Say 4000 Goodbyes. After the broadcast, Meegan's charity ICROSS received 400,000 euros in donations. On 19 November 2005, When You Say 4000 Goodbyes. was shown at Harvard University's prestigious Magners Irish Film Festival. On 5 May 2006, the documentary won the Radharc Award 2006 for the "documentary programme of outstanding quality which addresses a national or international topic of social justice, morality or faith." Meegan extended his model of grassroot, community owned, health care; writing and lecturing widely on public health in Africa. Meegan Published a series of books about human poverty and suffering. His latest publicatiom was TAKE MY HAND with Sharon Wilkinson.

On 7 April 2006, he received an honorary degree ( Doctorate in Medicine ) from the National University of Ireland in a ceremony at the Royal Hospital Kilmainham. On 5 December 2007, Meegan spoke at RedR UK's conference entitled Future Shocks: disasters and relief in a changing world on the same platform as the charity's British president HRH The Princess Royal. He continues in 2013 to develop the ICROSS model of integrated holistic health care, stressing evidence based planning. His research into water borne disease and diarrhoeal disease continues to impact rural health programmes internationally. Since 2009 Meegan has campaigned for changes in how AID is modelled, moving from donor driven, to community driven planning of public health services. He has lectured across the world on Global health, most recently at the Helsinki Global health summit with Sir Michael Marmot on Global health Inequity 13th June 2012, where he spoke on Global inequity in Africa and South East Asia. http://blogit.iltalehti.fi/christer-sundqvist/2012/06/13/terveyden-eriarvoisuus-ja-epaoikeudenmukaisuus/