Dr Lucille Teasdale Corti 

Lucille Teasdale was born in 1929 in Montreal (Canada). At thirteen while attending College, she decides to become a "missionary doctor in the East Indies". After obtaining her medical degree "cum laude" in 1955 and completing her internship at the Hôpital Sainte Justine in Montreal, she enters the specialisation course in paediatric surgery. During this period she meets Piero Corti, a young Italian physician who is carrying out a stage in paediatrics at the same hospital, to whom she confides her youthful dream.

In 1960 she again meets Piero Corti while carrying out a stage in surgical paediatrics in France, and accepts his offer to help him out for a few months to start a surgical department in Lacor, the small mission hospital where he has decided to work.

The arrived in Lacor Hospital in May 1961, and were married in the Comboni sister's chapel in the Hospital on December 5th, 1961.

From 1961 to 1982 Lucille is in charge of the surgical and the adult out-patient departments. She is also in charge of training the numerous Italian doctors during their three-months' training before undertaking their two years' civil service in substitution for the compulsory military conscription.

Her consultation is often requested from other hospitals in Northern Uganda. In 1979, during the first civil disruption due to the overthrowing of Idi Amin, Lacor becomes one of the very few Hospitals still fully operational for almost three million persons. Lucille is the only surgeon who can handle complex surgical operations, and finds herself operating on war victims. During these operations she sometimes cuts herself accidentally on sharp fragments of fractured bones, and in this way probably contracts the HIV virus. The diagnosis is confirmed in 1985, but she will carry on working until few months before her death.

In 1982 she also becomes responsible for the surgical internship of Ugandan medical doctors from Makerere University. From the early eighties, she reduces her activity in the operating theatres to 3 days a week due to the availability of other surgeons, mostly sent by the the Italian Ministry of External Affairs. Her surgical activity at this time focuses on paediatric surgery, obstetrics and gynaecology and to particularly difficult surgical cases.

From 1990 to 1992 she further reduces her surgical activity to the few most difficult cases, as her surgically acquired HIV infection progresses, but increases the adult out-patient activity and is also in charge of the 60 bed tuberculosis ward, where over 60% of patients have her own disease, AIDS.

She continues her activity until April 1996, and dies on August 1st, 1996. She is buried in "her" Hospital, beside Dr Piero and Dr Matthew. During her lifetime she carried out more than 13.000 major operations and cared for four generations of patients. She is considered a "National Hero" in her native Canada, and was awarded a number of international prizes and recognitions.