The man responsible for bringing coronary care and endoscopy to Wagga has died after battling an illness.
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Doctor Clive Inskip Varney Childs was born in Victoria to Clive and Florence Childs.
He completed primary school at Beechworth after his father, a pharmacist, gained employment there.
Dr Childs completed high school in Sale before studying medicine at Melbourne University.
He spent four years in the army then completed his residency at Royal Hobart Hospital before joining his father to work in Melbourne.
Dr Childs arrived in Wagga in 1967 to join specialist Dr Alan Collins, who was studying dermatology.
He travelled to Tumut monthly and to Narrandera bi-montly to consult and made connections with general practitioners in those towns.
Wagga Base Hospital had no existing coronary care unit and he persuaded the board to set one up in the unused nurses station in the old children’s ward.
When this was insufficient, he negotiated the use of one of the two nurses sick rooms.
Dr Childs and anaesthetist Dr Gerald Flynn arranged to have a portion of the wall between the two nurses stations removed and ward seven became the coronary/intensive care unit.
Dr Childs purchased a Baker-Hughes gastroscope for $12 from Heidelberg and endoscopy was introduced to Wagga Base Hospital.
A fibre optic gastroscope was purchased in 1972 from Olympus and he performed producedures in the outpatient theatre.
Dr Childs joined the Gastroenterological Society and was drawn to the specialty.
He established a small unit in his surgery in the 1980s, which meant that patients were not required to be hospitalised for their procedures.
He purchased the first videoscope in Wagga and provided services for gastroscopy, colonoscopy and bronschoscopy.
Dr Childs retired from practice in 2002 and became involved in the Prospect program, teaching and mentoring in remote areas in the Northern Territory.
The program ceased in 2008 but Dr Childs continued to visit the Northern Territory for a further two years.
Dr Childs spent his later years on his property with his wife, Anne, before he died this month after battling illness.
He is survived by his wife and children, Melanie, Lucinda and Campbell.
