Sir Harry Sin-Yang Fang

Welcome by the Public Orator

Vice-Chancellor,

Forty-one years ago, Harry Fang graduated from this University with the degree of Master of Orthopaedic Surgery. He was already a fully qualified doctor from that most British of institutions, the University of Hong Kong, and he had also spent the difficult years between 1943 and 1947 studying at the National Shanghai Medical University. His early career was that of a conventional young doctor, whose ambition it was to become an orthopaedic surgeon, and he was making his way up the complex hierarchy of the hospital world. There conventionally, to a great extent, ends. The young doctor did become a prestigious orthopaedic surgeon and a great, as well as a much-loved, teacher who is still today considerably in demand. He pioneered, in spinal surgery, a procedure which is known now as the “Hong Kong operation”. But while the surgeon can increasingly repair, renew and save life, many patients are not, he observed, restored to complete mobility.

His awareness of the human struggle which many of his patients endure in order to get back, as far as possible, to normality and to a point where they can enjoy a good quality life in a world often intolerant of disability, has led him throughout his career to campaign for the rehabilitation of the disabled, both as individuals and as members of society. He has sought to do this by pressing governments to recognise the problem and to support the disabled through innovative legislation and, more tangibly, through the provisions of their social services. He has endeavoured, also, to alert the public not only to have an awareness of the problem but also to take an active part in improving the situation of the disabled everywhere.

He has campaigned endlessly and has won new provision in Hong Kong. Through the United Nations World Health Organisation, he has been able to train some 1500 rehabilitation personnel for China during the last eight years.

To achieve these things he has found it necessary to work through, and to seek to influence, professional bodies in Hong Kong and at the United Nations. He has served on the Legislative Council and the Executive Council of the Hong Kong Government. For ten years, he was a Steward of the Royal Hong Kong Jockey Club, which is one of the more influential charitable institutions in Hong Kong, and he is still today an honorary Steward and a Trustee of the Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust.

He has presided over many important committees in the medical world, he has been involved in educational developments in both the major universities in Hong Kong, and he has been a member of the Courts of those universities. In 1981 he became the first Asian in 75 years to be elected President of the world body Rehabilitation International and he was able, during his term of office, to present the World Charter of Equal Opportunities for People with Disabilities to the heads of some twenty nations, including the Prime Ministers of Britain and China, as well as the Pope. His work and his energy for the disabled has been of enormous value to the cause itself, as well as to many individuals who have benefited in more personal ways. He has found time to write and to lecture in many countries, in support of the World Health Organisation Campaign for the Disabled.  Today, in his early seventies, he is still at work. In addition to his charitable work at the Jockey Club, he is Medical Superintendent of St. Paul’s Hospital, Hong Kong, Director of the United Nations World Health Organisation, Hong Kong Collaborating Centre in Rehabilitation and Chairman of the Hong Kong Joint Council for the Physically and Mentally Disabled.

Hong Kong today faces great challenges and opportunities as it prepares to become part of China in June 1997. Harry Fang has been, for many years, involved in building links with Beijing through his personal contacts and his professional work. It is to people like him that his countrymen turn at a momentous time like this to seek tangible evidence that they can sustain and stabilise their future.

During his distinguished career with its emphasis upon the high ideal of public service, he has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Colleges of Surgeons and Physicians, of Edinburgh, a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons and a Fellow of the Royal Australian College of Surgeons. He has been awarded honorary doctorates by both the major Hong Kong universities; he was given the Citizen of the Year Award in Hong Kong in 1981 and that same year was one of the United Kingdom Men of the Year. He was Rehabilitation International Man of the Year in 1984 and was awarded their Presidential Award for outstanding and distinguished service four years later. In 1990, America awarded him for Preminger Medallion, a medal of distinction of the People to People Committee for the Handicapped. The United Nations presented him with a special award the following year.

Her Majesty the Queen appointed him an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in 1969, he was raised Commander in 1980 and, much to the pleasure of his many friends both here and in Hong Kong, he was knighted in the Queen’s Birthday Honours last month.

Harry Fang represents all that is best in medical and public service. We, here in Liverpool, honour him for his signal achievements in both fields but we are particularly grateful, in addition, for his active support of this University through his work for our Graduate Association in Hong Kong. He is a man proud of his heritage who has a steadfast belief in the future of Hong Kong and his people; a man who is proud, too, of his links with this University, which, early in his career, played a part in his education.

Vice-Chancellor, in the name of the Senate and of the Council of the University, I present to you Sire harry Sin-Yang Fang for admission to the degree of Doctor of Medicine (honoris causa) in this University.