Psychiatric Bulletin (2000) 24: 356. doi: 10.1192/pb.24.9.356
© 2000 The Royal College of Psychiatrists
Psychiatric Bulletin (2000) 24: 356
© 2000 The Royal College of Psychiatrists
Steven Bosa
Formerly, inter alia, Advisor Psychiatrist to the Government of Uganda and the Ministry of Health
G. Allen German
Steven Bosa was the first indigenous Ugandan African to train in
psychiatry; he obtained his Conjoint DPM in 1960 after a period as a Clinical
Assistant at the Maudsley Hospital. He had graduated in Medicine in 1946 from
Makerere University College. He was elected a Foundation Member of the Royal
College of Psychiatrists in 1971 and later a
Fellow.?
I first met Steven in February 1966 when I arrived in Kampala to take up a
position as the Foundation Professor of Psychiatry at the Medical School of
the University of East Africa. Steven was the only other psychiatrist in
Uganda at that time. He was responsible for an astonishing range of duties and
services, which included the provision of mental health services to all of
Uganda and its 12 million people; the assessment of all persons sent to the
secure forensic unit based at Butabika (known as the Broadmoor Unit); the
management and administration of the Nurses Training School, also based at
Butabika, and also, until my arrival, he had provided clinical and theoretical
teaching to the medical students of Makerere Medical School. In addition, he
was the only and much respected advisor in matters of mental health to the
Government of Uganda and its Ministry of Health.
He had fought hard and effectively for the establishment of a Chair in
Psychiatry at Makerere. Until, as early as 1952, having been given the
responsibility of finding a suitable site for a ‘modern mental
hospital’ in Uganda, he not only identified the Butabika site, but
secured this splendid piece of ground in the face of competition from
developers and various other government ministries.
Physically he was a small, compact person, quick and agile in his
movements, who expressed emotion with his whole body and facial expressions.
He set and insisted on maintaining high standards in his clinical and
administrative work and I soon became personally aware that when a visit from
Dr Bosa was due at the Ministry of Health in Entebbe those expecting to see
him were in no doubt that their performance or lack of it would not escape his
sharp eye.
In the course of his lifelong preoccupation he started and sustained the
Psychiatric Nurse Training School at Butabika Hospital, a concept which he
introduced to the Government in 1960. When deserted by the flight of
expatriates, psychiatrists and other mental health specialists in the face of
a rampaging Idi Amin in 1972-1973 and 1974 he managed, in the face of all
odds, to keep a central and rural service going by careful deployment of his
devoted nursing personnel. Later, after his formal retirement in 1973, he
managed to convince the Ministry of Health to set up a Psychiatric Clinical
Officers Training School, again at Butabika, which saw its first intake during
the turbulence of 1979 when the Amin regime was in a state of terminal
collapse. These clinical officers are now responsible for running
community-based mental health services in every corner of Uganda.
He suffered from a flying phobia throughout life. As a result he travelled
only as far as he could by road. The exception, of course, was his emergence
to train in the UK, an experience which he held dear, as if the Holy Grail of
his achievements, talking often when frustrated of "going home to
London". But he never did.
He died in Kampala, Uganda in February 2000, at the age of approximately 80
years.
