By Basil Roman From The New York Caribbean News

He was once called the “little doctor boy.” At least, that was the way Lady Bustamante, wife of Sir Alexander Bustamante, Jamaica’s first Prime Minister, described George Alleyne to his wife, Sylvan Chen, more than half a century ago. Back then, the Bajan was a newly minted physician trained at the fledgling University College of the West Indies at Mona in Jamaica. He had just married his Jamaica-born wife, a hospital nurse whom he had met while doing his rounds as a fourth year medical student.

Today, Sir George is the highly revered global icon known for his effective advocacy of universal access to high quality health care that prolongs life, boost the survival of infants so they can reach adulthood and live well into their senior years. Little wonder that he is routinely described as a “Caribbean and global treasure” when it comes to health, education and the family.

The West Indian whose family roots can be traced to St. Philip in Barbados and whose educational foundation was first cemented at Harrison College, just outside of Bridgetown, recently outlined the exciting and highly productive chapters of his life – growing up years in his birthplace, winning the prestigious Barbados Scholarship; becoming a UCWI medical student in Jamaica, and later serving as a young physician in Jamaica, Barbados and Britain decades before joining the hierarchy of the Pan American Health Organization in Washington D.C. – in a rich and elegant memoire, “The Groom of a Chancellor,” who was bitten by the bug of being a West Indian.

“Those of us who were socialized into being West Indian at Mona (campus) in my day have remained committed to the ideal, which must of necessity find expression in ways other than through a political structure,” he wrote in the autobiography that captures his climb from a school teacher’s son in Barbados to being the first West Indian elected as PAHO’s Director

in the 1990s but who came close to being elected the Director-General of the World Health Organization in Geneva.

But WHO’s loss turned out to be a blessing for the Caribbean. His more than a decade as his alma mater’s Chancellor saw the Caribbean’s premiere tertiary educational institution emerge as a world-ranked University with a track record that’s the envy of prominent schools in the Americas and Europe.

That’s not all. His deep interest in the health and education of millions of West Indians drove him to become a global advocate for the world’s poorer countries hit hard by the incidence of non-communicable diseases – diabetes, cancer, high blood pressure and heart disease.

The respect he enjoys and the affection showered on him by West Indians of all walks of life, academia and health experts were on full display recently when his well written memoire was launched in Barbados, New York and Washington. The presence of top UN diplomats in New York — Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados and St. Kitts-Nevis who read portions of the book spoke volumes about his illustrious career. The elegance of his prose, the vast amount of detail and the mood he captured have combined to make “The Grooming of a Chancellor” an easy and entertaining read and a must for any collection of publications, electronic library and social media archive .

As a matter of fact, his autobiography is a very important addition to the growing body of outstanding Caribbean literature published in recent decades in and out of the Caribbean region and North America. Included on that vital list are P.J. Patterson’s excellent “My Political Journey;” James Mitchell’s “Beyond The Islands;” Dr. Basil Bryan’s “Jamaicans Children of God;” “Edward Seaga’s “My Life and Leadership;” Janet Higbie’s “Eugenia, the Caribbean’s Iron Lady,” a former Prime Minister of Dominica; “Day-O” By Irving Burgie; “Words in Service” by Dr. Keith Mitchell, Prime Minister of Grenada; “Britain’s Black Debt, Reparations for Caribbean Slavery and Native Genocide” by Sir Hillary Beckles, Vice Chancellor of the University of the West Indies; “They call me George, The Untold Story of Black Train Porters and the Birth of Modern Canada,” by Prof. Cecil Foster; “Glimpses of a Global Life” by Sir Shridath Ramphal, former Commonwealth Secretary—General; Austin ‘Tom’ Clarke’s “The Polished Hoe” and “Pigtails and Breadfruit,” and “Lessons my Mother Taught Me,” a celebration of Caribbean Motherhood edited by Francilia Greaves.