Dr Roger Parnis
Roger Parnis MBE (1923-1993) was a Maltese Surgeon in New South Wales, Australia.
Early life and career
Roger was born in Sliema, Malta on 6 October, 1923. He was educated at St Catherine's Day School, the Lyceum and the Royal University of Malta from where he graduated with a B.Sc (1944) and an MD (1946).
After spending a couple of years working in Malta, he travelled to England where he qualified as a surgeon (FRCS, 1952). In 1953 he travelled to Greece to help in the aftermath of an earthquake there. He returned to Malta in 1956 but in the same year joined the British Medical Colonial Service and was posted in Abeokuta in Western Nigeria and later (1958) in Ibadan. He obtained his Diploma in Tropical Medicine and Health from the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine in 1960. Between 1971 and 1978 he went back to Malta as a surgeon at St Luke’s and as a Demonstrator in Anatomy at the University.
In 1979 he migrated to Australia where he was appointed Specialist Surgeon at Inverell District Hospital, New South Wales.
In 1987, at the age of 65, after retiring from practice in Australia, Roger decided to spend some time in Papua New Guinea. He commented: “Spear and arrow wounds and coconut injuries were new to me as was the cancer of the mouth associated with the chewing of betel nuts (buai) or added lime. Abscesses are very common, of every size and at every location”. He continued: “My two years in a Mission Hospital in a Third World country have changed my way of thinking and my lifestyle very dramatically and, I hope, for the better. The dedication, hard work, abstemious living, love and, above all, sheer endurance with which Anne and I were surrounded make up a wonderful memory which will never be erased from our minds.”
Publications
- Exploring Gozo, Exploring Malta,
- Of Wines and Spirits,
- Of No Fixed Address [an autobiography].
Awards and recognitions
- In 1965 he was made a member of the British Empire (MBE) for services to the Nigerian community.
Roger married Anne Caruana Galizia and they had two sons, Francis and Eric, and two daughters, Clare and Catherine.
Sources
- Parnis, Roger, Of No Fixed Address
- Information obtained largely from communication with his wife, Anne Parnis