Homecoming for district’s health chief
It will be a return home when Dr Nigel Murray joins the Waikato District Health Board next month.
Murray, who grew up in Walton, was announced late last week as the DHB’s new chief executive.
He has recently been the president and CEO at Fraser Health Authority in Canada and will take over from Craig Climo on July 21.
Murray’s family have dairy farmed in the Walton district since the late 1880s and his father, a retired cardiologist, still lives there today.
‘‘I went to Walton Primary School and have so many fond memories of playing rugby in the paddock down there. My mother and her cousins all went to the same school.’’
The father of four – two sons, two daughters – has been with Fraser Health since October 2007. Before that he was CEO at Southland DHB and held management positions at Auckland DHB.
But it was his time in the New Zealand Army where Murray made a significant mark.
Before joining the army, he practised in New Zealand. While in the Army he graduated with a Masters of Occupational Medicine at Harvard University’s School of Public Health.
He worked with the United Nations Special Commission in Iraq where he was responsible for establishing and maintaining health and safety systems towards the end of the first Gulf War.
His work involved ensuring the safety of diplomats and health officials who decommissioned Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. From there it was to Bosnia where his job was to rebuild a health system following the civil war .
He was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list in 1995 for services to health in the NZ Defence Force.