Ma Haide (George Hatem)

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Ma Haide (Chinese: Mǎ Hǎidé 马海德; 1910-1988), born George Hatem, was a doctor and public health official in China from 1933 until his death.

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[edit] Early life

Ma was born in 1910 to Lebanese immigrant parents living in Buffalo, New York. His parents immigrated from the village of Hamana in the Metn mountains of Lebanon. He attended pre-med classes at the University of North Carolina and medicine at the American University in Beirut and the University of Geneva. While in Geneva, Ma became acquainted with students from East Asia, and learned much about China. With financial help from the parents of one of his friends, he and several others set off to Shanghai to establish a medical practice to concentrate on venereal diseases, as well as basic health care for the needy.

[edit] Shanghai

Ma set up the practice in Shanghai in 1933. It was in Shanghai that he met the well known journalist, Agnes Smedley, who introduced him to Liu Ting, a member of the Communist Party of China. Disgusted by the corruption of Shanghai and the Chinese Nationalists, he closed his practice there three years later, and, with the help of the earlier established Communist contacts, was smuggled across Kuomintang lines to provide medical service to Mao Zedong's Communist troops in Sian.

[edit] Yan'an

Later on, Ma travelled to the Communist headquarters at Yan'an. He was accompanied by the pioneering American journalist Edgar Snow. At Hatem's request, he was not explicitly mentioned in the first edition of Snow's famous book, Red Star Over China. He is there anonymously as a western-trained doctor who had examined Mao and determined he was not dying of some mysterious disease, which was the rumour at the time. He also became the first foreign member of the Chinese Communist Party.

He was present at Yan'an, when the Dixie Mission, an American civilian and military group, arrived in July 1944. Ma was a source of surprise and comfort for many of the Americans when they met the American born physician. Many accounts of the mission make reference to Haide. Known commonly to the group as "Doc Ma," Ma periodically assisted Major Melvin Casberg in studies of the state of medical treatment in the Communist territories.

[edit] Post War Life

He remained a doctor with the Communists until their victory in 1949, and then became a public health official. He is credited with helping to eliminate Leprosy and many venereal diseases in post-war China for which he received the Lasker Medical Award for his efforts in 1986. He was one of the few non-Chinese persons to hold a position of trust and authority in the People's Republic of China. His Chinese name can be loosely translated to mean,"Horse" and "Virtue From the Sea".

He died in China in 1988 and was buried at the Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery.

[edit] References

  • Edgar A. Porter, The People's Doctor: George Hatem and China's Revolution (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1997).
  • Snow, Edgar. The Other Side of the River : Red China Today. New York : Random House, 1962.

[edit] External links

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