Raphael Cilento - Middle Career

Middle Career

Following a further term in New Guinea, he became Director of the Commonwealth Government's Division of Tropical Hygiene in Brisbane. He held that role from 1928 to 1934.

In 1934 Queensland's Forgan Smith Government set out to create one of the world's first universally free public health systems, and then Minister for Health, Ned Hanlon, recruited Dr Raphael Cilento to achieve this goal as Director-General of Health and Medical Services. Cilento, despite his subsequent identification with the political right wing, never lost his belief in government-funded health care. To assist in his policy-making objectives, he studied law and was admitted to the Bar in 1939.

As Director-General (a position he held till 1945), and combined with the presidency of the state's Medical Board (as well as with the medicine professorship at the University of Queensland), he firmly opposed the anti-polio methods of Elizabeth Kenny, although at first he had spoken politely enough of her work to give the impression that he favoured it.

Cilento was knighted in 1935 (when only 42 years old) for his contributions to public service and tropical medicine. He briefly achieved international fame after the Second World War for his work in aiding refugees with the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. In July 1945 he was the first civilian doctor to enter Belsen concentration camp, after doing considerable work on malaria control in The Balkans. He was Director for Refugees and Displaced Persons from 1946 to 1947, and from 1948 was director of disaster relief in Palestine but resigned in 1950 after expressing sympathy with dispossessed Palestinian refugees. He returned to Australia in 1951.