George Getzel Cohen

Dr. George Getzel Cohen was born in 1927, attended Parktown Boys' High School and the University of the Witwatersrand and is the founder of Harry's Angels, an innovative flying doctors project which flew specialists from South Africa to Swaziland through the 1970s, bringing free specialist treatment to an impoverished country.

The kingdom of Swaziland had few specialists of its own at that time, relying on general practitioners for all medical work. Cohen, a Johannesburg radiologist, approached Harry Oppenheimer, a mining magnate with progressive views, to provide small airplanes to fly surgeons and other specialists from Johannesburg to Mbabane for weekends where they would donate their time to the local hospital. Before Cohen created the project, patients had to be flown to Johannesburg at considerable cost to receive specialist intervention. The project received considerable acclaim in South Africa and Swaziland.

The all-white South African government attempted to use Cohen to provide a similar scheme to one of its Bantustans — land tracts usually without mineral resources parcelled out to blacks — in an attempt to justify apartheid. The aim of involving Cohen was to validate the Bantustans as separate countries to which South Africa was providing help. But Cohen, strongly committed to a non-racist South Africa, refused. Instead, he drew attention to the poverty and malnourishment in these areas, pointing out basic needs which required attention to before specialist medical services could be of use. His refusal drew front-page national news coverage.

Cohen won a seat in the Johannesburg City Council representing the anti-apartheid Progressive Party.

He handed over leadership of Harry's Angels to another doctor in 1978 when he migrated to Sydney, Australia, where he ran a highly successful radiology practice for nearly thirty years.

Cohen attended Parktown Boys' High School and the University of the Witwatersrand. He obtained his post-graduate degrees in London at the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons. He is married to wife of 60 years, Vivian, and has three children, and four grandchildren.

References

• "Harry's Angels". British Medical Journal. 4 (5838): 492. doi:10.1136/bmj.4.5838.492. PMC 1786765.
• Harry's Angels, by Bob Hitchock, 1978. Valliant Press.
• Cohen, G (1958). "Massive pulmonary embolism without infarction". British Journal of Radiology. 31: 326–330.
• Cohen, G (1958). "Primary Liposarcoma of bone. The angiography findings and doubts as to its intramedullary origin". British Journal of Radiology. 31: 422–44.
• Cohen, G. (1959). The radiological demonstration of Dracunculus Medinensis. The South African Medical Journal, 26 December 1094.
• Cohen, G (1958). "Cyst-wall calcification in intracranial cysticercosis". South African Medical Journal. 32 (43): 1033.
• Cohen, G. (1958). Traumatic haemomediastinum: A case report. South African Medical Journal, 15 March, 298.
• Cohen, G. (1957). The radiological differential diagnosis of unilateral pulmonary veiling. 25 November 1186.
• Cohen, G. (1958). Deduction of chemical composition of urinary calculi by radiological means. South African Medical Journal, 8 November 1089.
• Cohen, G (1972). "Harry's Angels" (PDF). British Medical Journal. 4: 288–290. doi:10.1136/bmj.4.5835.288. PMC 1788834. PMID 5083893.