SAAHIP HISTORY: 35 YEARS OF COHERENT PHARMACY

 This account of SAAHIP's early years was published in the January 1988 issue of FORUM. It was a contribution from Harry Chasen who was the longest-serving  President of SAAHIP. It was a less serious look at the early history of SAAHIP

              35 years of coherent pharmacy in the  institutional ranks:                     the SAAHIP saga

                            by Harry Chasen

The recent visit of the National President of SAAHIP to the two Transvaal branches aroused a feeling of nostalgia and stocktaking when he announced that SAAHIP membership now stood at well over 600 paid up members. What a beautiful coherent achievement in the ranks of institutional pharmacy in retrospect!

As past president of SAAHIP; Transvaal Chairman of the original Transvaal based Institutional Society; Chairman, Secretary and committee member of SAAHIP Transvaal my thoughts retrace the 35 years of my association with this organisation.

The early years

Starting with the formation of the Transvaal based Hospital Pharmacists Organisation which was formed in1952, at a meeting held in Johannesburg when a motley of institutional pharmacists gathered and organised themselves, under the chairmanship of the late Frank Cochrane, the then head of the pharmacy department at the Pretoria General Hospital (now the HF Verwoerd Hospital) into the forerunner of SAAHIP as it is today. There could not have been more than twenty potential members present at the inauguration meeting. The aims of the organisation were to form a body that would endeavour to further the professional status and rights of the pharmacists in the State institutions. The group proceeded to unify the institutional pharmacists in one body.

A secretary was appointed, none other than Mr Harry Schonegevel, who at the time was employed by the SAR & H Sick Fund. The gentleman has graciously retired and lives in Muizenberg today. He was the first member on whom an honorary life membership was bestowed.

Mr Cochrane, who incidentally was also an examiner for Pharmacognosy and Dispensing, retired from the Transvaal Provincial Administration as chief of pharma­ ceutical services at the old Johannesburg General Hospital. He spent the years of his retirement in Cape Town until the time of his death.

The feminist move

The membership consisted mostly of the male species, as the female species were sparsely represented in the institutional ranks. However, there was one, Margery Johnston, recently retired from Vereeniging Hospital, who was adamant and demanded from the committee to institute equal salaries for male and female pharmacists in the Service. At that stage there was a pay differentiation between male and female pharmacists. Needless to say, the committee could not grant Margery her wish, but proceeded to approach the authorities with a request to equalise the salary structure. Tactfully Margery harped on the fact that women were unfairly treated. She took up the attitude coinciding with that of a suffragette who demanded her voting rights. Eventually the equalising of pay was granted and somehow I had a feeling that this action led to Margery losing interest in attending meetings.

The first chairmen

The annual general meetings were attended by be tween 20 and 30 paid up members. Chairmen who were elected during this period were Mr Dirk Meerkotter, Mr Nicola van der Merwe, Major N Larkin, and then came Mr Trevor Manning, who, after a successful year as chairman of the organisation, was successful in becoming the National President of the PSSA, the first institutional pharmacist to achieve this honour. At the time Trevor was  a senior pharmacist at Edenvale Hospital.

I remember very well attending committee meetings at Pharmacy House in Jorrisen Street during the early evenings after which we walked across Jorrisen Street to the Phoenix Hotel for a tankard of ale. We spent a leisurely evening talking pharmaceutical politics and the events of the day pertaining to the pharmacist.

The majority of enthusiastic Transvaal members were from the Pretoria area and thus committee meetings started to be held in Pretoria. The secretaryship always presented a problem, and at this time Nicola van der Merwe and his wife Fran accepted the task of Secretary for the Society which at this stage was under the chairmanship of Major Larkin, now retired Major-General. Yours truly was the vice-chairman, a position occupied for a few years. The secretaryship eventually passed on to Mr Jame Steward Nimmo, a doyen of the institutional pharmacists in the Transvaal, at the time he was head of the pharmacy department at the Pretoria General Hospital.

Moves towards a countrywide organisation

Although the membership was confined to Transvaal institutional pharmacists at the time, the membership was made up of a core of diehards who proceeded to further the aims of the organisation and its members without any hesitancy.

At this stage we already perceived that the pharmacists in Natal were becoming aware of the Transvaal establishment and were starting to organise themselves likewise.

By now the Banana Boys from Natal had made contact with the Transvaal organisation and Messrs Angus Mitchell and Roy Shooter were invited to attend a general meeting at Kyalami Ranch of the Transvaal organisation. It was then quite apparent that a National Executive was in the offing.

The story of events in the Transvaal spread to the Western Cape and then news came that an organisation, similar to that in the Transvaal and Natal was being mustered under the leadership of the late Dudley Goldberg . The rumours of the emergence of a national institutional pharmacists organisation were rife. Many of the teaching institutions' pharmacists were associating themselves more and more with the hospital pharmacists where they felt they were more at home than in the PSSA.

An invitation by Transvaal was extended to the Natal colleagues and also to Mr Goldberg from the Western Cape to attend an annual general meeting of the Transvaal organisation. This was held at the Carlton Hotel. Natal and the Cape were well organised, the members of the Transvaal all saw the eventual amalgamation of the various organisations in the RSA , and during the election of office bearers, after speeches of amalgamation were made, Angus Mitchell was elected Chairman, Dudley Goldberg vice chairman. Harry Chasen and Steward Nimmo were the only two Transvaal committee members elected onto the new committee. The meeting instructed the new chairman to proceed to draw up a new constitution tor the formation of a national pharmaceutical organisation tor the RSA. This constitution, drawn up by Angus Mitchell and Harry Chasen, was the draft that was presented to a General Meeting at the Airport Hotel by Angus Mitchell.

The draft constitution was accepted by the members at the meeting. SAAHIP was thus established. An election was held at the same time, and Harry Chasen was elected to be the first president of SAAHIP. A new era for institutional pharmacists was established. The committee consisted of members from Transvaal, Natal, and the Cape Western Province.

Recognition

This was an era of expansion, development and recognition for the institutional pharmacists in the RSA. The new constitution provided for the SAAHIP members to be automatic members of the PSSA, thus entitling SAAHIP members to a monthly copy of the Pharmaceutical Journal and to attend PSSA conferences. Provision was made for SAAHIP members to attend various committee meetings of the PSSA National Executive as observers.

A good relationship was established between the executive of the PSSA and that of SAAHIP. Here mention must be made of the wise guidance and advice given to the SAAHIP executive by that doyen of the Pharmaceutical Society, Mr John Nuttall in his capacity as secretary of the PSSA, since then also retired.

No Secretary

Again the SAAHIP national executive faced a dilemma in that there was nobody in its ranks to take up the duties of a secretary for the organisation. It was soon realised that professional help would have to be made available to keep the affairs of SAAHIP in order. The national executive gave their approval for the president to appoint a secretary to attend to the administrative affairs of SAAHIP. Thus it came to the appointment of Mr Lance Levin as the first National Secretary of SAAHIP.

The organisation was now in business. Regular quarterly executive meetings were being conducted in the Transvaal, usually on Saturdays at the Airport Hotel at Jan Smuts Airport. This was for the convenience of the members arriving by plane from the various provinces.

Expansion

During a PSSA conference in Bloemfontein which was also attended by Messrs Chasen and Roy Shooter, specific instructions were issued by the national executive to the two to do everything in their power to establish a branch of SAAHIP in the OFS. Contact was made with institutional pharmacists in Bloemfontein, and a sponsored evening was arranged, attended by 10 OFS pharmacists.

The basis for an OFS branch was laid that evening, and a short while later the OFS branch was formed. Now the stage was set with branches established in all tour provinces of the RSA.

Racial discrimination

As in the past when the Transvaal organisation was asked to intervene to equalise salaries between male and female pharmacists, so now the member from Natal on the National executive, Mr Colin Lowther, took the fight for equal salaries tor all races of pharmacists to the national executive. Again the authorities were approached and ongoing representations were made till eventually today we have not only got equal salaries tor male and female pharmacists but also equal salaries tor all races of pharmacists .

A mouthpiece of our own

Up to this period SAAHIP had no mouthpiece of its own. Articles occasionally, written by institutional pharmacists, were published in the Pharmaceutical Journal. Here SAAHIP had a friend in Dorothy Steel, the official reporter of the Pharmaceutical Journal who encouraged institutional pharmacists to write articles which she then published. However, SAAHIP members were not satisfied that they did not have their own mouthpiece. The Natal group had at that stage brought out a typed document from time to time in which articles of pharmaceutical interest were published. This document was well received and the bold letters FORUM on the front page became synonymous with institutional pharmacy.

During an annual conference in East London, the National President approached the National Executive of SAAHIP with a request to vote R200 of its meagre funds towards the official national approval to publish FORUM at regular times. The following year funds for the purchase of a typewriter were approved and the result is a regular printed copy of our own mouthpiece, still called FORUM.

A pharmacist as Secretary

At this stage Lance Levin resigned his post as secretary of SAAHIP and again the services of a secretary were being sought. This time however the president started looking amongst the ranks of SAAHIP members for a person who was prepared to take over the secretarial duties. On being approached, Joe Cohen, a member of SAAHIP, but not of the National Executive, agreed to accept the position without hesitation. Joe has been the National Secretary for many years. He has served three presidents already and hopefully will remain in his post serving the future presidents of SAAHIP.

Further expansion

Today the original 4 branches of SAAHIP, one for each province of the RSA, has increased to 7 branches. First Natal, then the Cape Province, and now the Transvaal have opted for a second branch in their respective provinces.