Trauma SAJS

It is a great honour to be invited to give the 2006 J. H. Louw Memorial Lecture. Professor Louw was a great man. His interest in paediatric surgery was undoubtedly stimulated by his meeting with David Waterstone from the Hospital for Sick Children in London during World War II and the fact that his firstborn son died of intestinal atresia.1 In 1951 he did a fellowship under Sir Dennis Brown at the Hospital for Sick Children and there started his work on the pathogenesis of intestinal atresia. Professor Louw is without doubt the father of paediatric surgery in South Africa. In 1952 he established the first paediatric surgical service in Cape Town at Groote Schuur Hospital. He was one of the promoters of Red Cross War Memorial Children’s Hospital, and set up a training pro-gramme in paediatric surgery there. His prerequisite for any surgeon working at Red Cross Hospital was that the sur-geon would be capable of looking after the child as a whole, and I feel that this should still hold true today. He was the first president of the South African Association of Pediatri