Missionary nurse who supported Zimbabwe’s struggle

Sister Patricia Walsh, who has died aged 72, spent 42 years of her life in Zimbabwe as a nurse and midwife.

Her initial posting, at St Theresa's mission hospital at Chirumanzu, coincided with the bitter five-year civil war from which Robert Mugabe emerged victorious in 1980, putting an end to the British colony known as Southern Rhodesia.

She witnessed malnutrition among the children of black workers on white-owned farms. “We longed for the birth of Zimbabwe,” she said, “and in the first years it was good. We were so hopeful, so happy after independence.

“The ministry of health gave us whatever we needed, they bent over backwards and the health of the population improved a lot .”

But the Jesuit-educated Mugabe’s increasingly autocratic rule disappointed many who had welcomed his accession to power. “There is despair everywhere and yet I love the country,” she said. “We have no food to give out and surely we can be trusted to do it fairly and be accountable.”

Questionnaires

Sister Patricia criticised NGOs like the

World Health Organisation

for using questionnaires to decide who got aid. “How can a child whose parents have died of HIV know how to obtain, let alone fill in a questionnaire to feed younger siblings?”

Anna Maria Catherine Walsh came from Glasson, Co Westmeath. She was the eldest of four, and her father worked as a caretaker and fisherman.

From 1956 to 1960 she attended St Peter’s secondary school in Athlone. Like many young Irish women of her generation she went to London to study nursing and midwifery.

She was 27 and a nurse when she joined a Dominican missionary community in London in 1969, took her first vows in 1971 and was posted to what is now Zimbabwe in 1973. Thereafter she was Sr Patricia.

She helped in the fight for black majority rule through giving food, clothing and medicine to the rebels. She often said she was a “Zimbabwean freedom fighter in my own right”.

Preventable diseases

As a district nurse and health visitor Sr Patricia encountered diseases that could have been prevented if people had clean water and good sanitation. She set about fundraising to dig wells and boreholes and latrines. She also became very exercised about lives lost to HIV through malnutrition.

In 1981 she took a diploma in health education at the University of Zimbabwe. When she graduated she became a member of the Dominican sisters’ general council in 1996.

From 2001 to 2008 she was a member of the order’s regional council. She also continued to develop the three Dominican hospitals as a member of the boards of St Theresa’s, Regina Coeli in Nyanga and St Joseph’s in Mutare, organising practical workshops for nursing sisters and doctors, and remaining active until 2014, when she was diagnosed with lung cancer.

Sr Patricia Walsh, known as Nancy by her family and as “Vatete” (aunt) by her fellow nuns, is survived by her sisters Kathy Brooks and Brigid Daly, and by her brother Martin.