(Tuesday September 06, 2016 Issue)
He
was among the “talented tenth” of Africans who, after completing their studies
in the West, returned home to the countries of their birth to begin the
daunting task of post-Independence nation building. Having qualified as a
medical doctor and surgeon, he came home fully imbued with the spirit of public
service, and over the course of half a century, served his nation and the
entire continent of Africa with rare distinction. His death was a great pain,
and it is indeed with great sadness that we mourn the passing of this
illustrious son of the Gambia: Dr. Ebrima Malick Samba.
Dr.
Samba was born in 1928, in Upper Baddibu, North Bank Region; and from an early
age, the idea of becoming a doctor had caught his imagination, sparked by an
encounter he had had with a doctor at his local hospital. In fact, he had been
taken to the hospital, because he had broken his arm, having fallen from a
mango tree. He was 14 years old at the time.
Barthurst, the capital city, beckoned, as it did for all young, bright
boys of the hinterland. Promptly he set out for the capital city, and through
sheer pertinacity and brilliance, he got into school, eventually coming top in
the Matriculation exams for entry into British universities.
Unfortunately,
the privilege of intellect was not quite matched by the privilege of wealth, so
he had to pass up, for now, the opportunity of studying in Britain, and took
up, instead, an offer from the University College of the Gold Coast (renamed,
University of Ghana, Legon). He graduated with a B.Sc degree in 1953. He
proceeded, first, to Ireland, and then to Scotland, and by 1964 he had returned
to the Gambia, having practiced briefly in the UK, with a double Fellowship, of
the Royal College of Surgeons and of the Royal College of Physicians, and with
his wife, Dolly Samba, and children Ebou
Adama and Kinday ..
He
joined the Royal Victoria Hospital, and in scarcely more than a decade he had
risen through the ranks, from Specialist Surgeon to Medical Superintendent to
Director of Medical Services of the Gambia, in 1978. Such were his talents that
he was very quickly noticed by the World Health Organisation (WHO), and in 1979
he was elected to chair a technical committee of the World Health Assembly; one
of many World Health commissions and committees he would chair or sit on.
Among his numerous achievements as Director of
Medical Services, perhaps the most enduring, with far-reaching consequences,
was his introduction of a national Primary Health Care plan in 1980, which
still remains the bases of the country’s national health care. In many ways, it
was only a matter of time before WHO came knocking for his full-time services.
And this came in December 1980, when he took up appointment as Director of
WHO’s Onchocerciasis Control Programme (OCP).
This was a programme designed to eliminate river blindness, which had
been ravaging vast swathes of West Africa, bringing much misery to many human
lives. According a World Health Organisation report, when the programme “began
in West Africa in 1974, 10% of the population in high impact regions was
completely blind and 30% had severe visual handicaps. More than 250,000 square
kilometres of once-productive river valley had been abandoned”.
By
the end of Dr. Samba’s tenure, “37 million acres of fertile land had been freed
for agriculture” and “17 million affected people have been resettled along the
Volta river basin”. Furthermore, the programme was extended to other affected
areas on the continent. In recognition
of this monumental feat, he received the Bazan Prize for Preventive Medicine
and The Africa Prize for Leadership for Sustainable End of Hunger, in 1992. For
most, this might have been the closing curtains of their career, but for Dr.
Samba the professional ascendancy had one more rung to conquer: he became the
WHO Regional Director for Africa in 1995. A position he held for a decade,
transforming the office as sweepingly as he had done with the OCP.
It
speaks immensely of the man that the stellar professional career never obscured
his civic duty to his community. He had his feet firmly grounded in the common
soil, in spite of the stratospheric achievements. Lesser men would probably
have retreated into the ivory tower, in splendid isolation, with faux-patrician
smugness. But not so Dr. Samba: a string of community initiatives have been
credited to his name: the founding of the
Muslim High School, in Banjul; the initiation of a “self-help project
for a mission-run HIV/AIDS orphanage in Zimbabwe”; and on his retirement from
WHO in 2005, the founding of a Senior Secondary School for girls, named after
his mother, Sukai Ndatteh Mbye. His support of the health sector in
this country had also been enormous, and it was a fitting homage to his
achievements to have been honored by the School of Medicine & Allied Health
Sciences of the University of the Gambia in 2015 at the induction ceremony of
the newly qualified medical practitioners into the medical profession. There
could not have been a finer specimen of role model than Dr. Ebrima Malick
Samba.
He perhaps also exemplified the idea that
science and religion need not be at loggerheads. The two indeed address
different domains of the human condition, and can therefore sit cooperatively
in the human heart, each ministering to its sphere of relevance. At the time of his death, he had been
chairman of the Committee of Banjul Muslim Elders , having first served as Vice
Chairman, and then taking over the chairmanship from the late Alh. Abdou Faal.
Dr. Samba led several Islamic organisations and participated in
numerous conferences in many parts of the world coming out with great success..
He was a staunch, deeply religious person throughout his life; a pious and
strong Islamic leader. In his middle age, he was one of the youngest members to
sit on the Board of the Committee of Banjul Muslim Elders, even though, at the
time, he had a hefty international portfolio. He travelled widely, to Saudi
Arabia and other Islamic countries, with the late Imam Ratib of Banjul, Alh.
Momodou Lamin Bah and the Rabita, promoting
Gambia’s stature in the Islamic world. Throughout his tenure, he showed the
same distinctive blend of qualities and competencies that had seen him scale
the summit of his professional career.
As
medical practitioner, researcher, academic, administrator, community leader and
philanthropist, he represented the best of Gambia, with a model of excellence
firmly rooted in industry, probity, piety and love of community and country.
Under the umbrella of the Women’s Bureau in Banjul, he created a revolving fund
to support women farmers in horticulture, as well as in other projects, in the
Kombo area. Dr. Samba was a hard working
character, a no-nonsense man, who loved his children and siblings, especially
his grandchildren, and everyone else associated with his family. His
Hippocratic Oath went beyond his medical profession: it pervaded his whole
being, leading him to a life of honesty, purposefulness, and selfless devotion
to the common good. We celebrate his life and his tremendous achievements. His indelible
footprints will remain clear forever.
His
death has robbed us of a great man, and we extend our deepest condolences to
his wives, children, grandchildren and the entire family. May Allah bless him
and place him in Ja’naah in perfect and everlasting peace.
Compiled By: Alh. Alieu Mboge
Secretary
Committee of Banjul Muslim elders
September
2016
