Mona Tyndall

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Sister Dr. Mona Tyndall (April 14, 1921 – June 7, 2000), one of the six children of businessman David P. Tyndall and his wife, Sarah Gaynor Tyndall, was brought up in Glasnevin, County Dublin.

She became a member of the Roman Catholic religious congregation of the Missionary Sisters of the Holy Rosary (MSHR). She was a well-known missionary in Nigeria and Zambia, and an active development worker in the early fight against HIV/AIDS through her leadership of Mother & Child Clinics supported by the Irish Government’s overseas aid programme in Zambia.

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[edit] Religious Profession & Medical Qualifications

She joined the Holy Rosary Sisters in Killeshandra, County Cavan, in 1940, and after religious profession on August 28, 1942, she later qualified as a medical doctor at University College Dublin. She then went to England and qualified as an obstetrician and gynaecologist.

[edit] Missionary Life

[edit] Nigeria and the Biafran War

She began her very long missionary life in Africa starting in Nigeria in 1949 where she ministered to the sick and particularly to young mothers. She was very active along with her fellow religious, in caring for the wounded and displaced during the Biafran War which broke out in Nigeria in 1967.

Mission hospitals and feeding centers were overwhelmed by the plight of the sick and wounded civilians and soldiers, and she labored to save lives and console homeless orphans. Day and night, through onslaughts, black-outs, and the rumble of war, she and other sisters cared for the starving and the dying. Eventually, Federal Nigerian troops overcame the Biafran secessionist resistance, and took possession of all the Mission stations.

Sr. Mona and her fellow sisters and priests remained at their posts as long as they could caring for the needy, until they were surrounded, arrested, and hauled off in cattle trucks to be imprisoned along with their Bishop, the late Rev. Dr. J. Whelan, C.S.Sp. They were finally released and deported only through the personal intercession of Pope Paul VI and deported from Nigeria.

[edit] Zambia

The remainder of her missionary life was spent in Zambia, where she worked firstly in Monze Mission Hospital, and later in Lusaka University Teaching Hospital (UTH), after a brief year in the Westminster Pastoral Institute in London. As Consultant Obstetrician/Gynaecologist in UTH, she also became the national trainer of tutors in the sympto-thermal method of family planning. Concerned with hospital overcrowding and high post-natal mortality across the country, and anticipating the future Millennium Development Goals (especially Goal 5), she strove to reduce maternal mortality by half in the 1990s, and thus render more explicit the "Health for All" Alma Ata Declaration(1978). In this, she was strongly supported by the Government of Zambia, and attracted funding from Ireland's then-emerging Official Development Assistance.

With official encouragement and Irish aid, she helped establish the first ten maternal health clinics, and the country's first related ambulance service. Overcrowding at UTH was substantially reduced, and the project was expanded throughout the country. She was credited with a major role in setting up a network of rural clinics with trained local personnel, which dispensed natural family planning methods, and eventually raised awareness about the dangers of HIV/AIDS. The maternal clinics network was the result of her initiative.

[edit] Exemplary Influence

She retired from active missionary service and returned to Cavan in 1995, where she became involved with the Cavan Bereavement Group, for which she trained as a counselor and supervisor.

She was an acknowledged contributor to Ireland’s first White Paper on Foreign Policy, and is credited with having had an important role in influencing some elements of Ireland’s then-emerging overseas development aid policy. She was one of 17 contributors from the public whose written submissions were acknowledged in the policy paper, and lodged in the National Archives of Ireland.

Her spirituality formed the bedrock of faith upon which she built the capacity to address enormous challenges, cope with tragedy, and inspire others. Her vision and commitment were credited, posthumously, with having led to a considerable reduction in the number of maternal deaths in Zambia. She never played to an audience, but got on with the job at hand, and led by example. Her experience and pioneering initiatives on maternal and child health in Zambia were emulated by other bilateral aid agencies and replicated in other countries.

[edit] References

  • Challenges and Opportunities Abroad – White Paper on Foreign Policy, published by the Stationary Office for the Department of Foreign Affairs, Government of Ireland, Dublin, 1996 [ISBN 0-7076-2385-5]
  • Obituary: Death of Sr. Mona Tyndall, published in Anglo-Celt, issue of June 25, 2000.