AUSTRALIA’S first IVF baby was less than 10 years old when Scott Giltrap opened his reproductive clinic in Albury.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
“It was way out there but over time fertility services have become more common and it’s now just a regular part of medicine,” Dr Giltrap said.
It was the cutting edge aspect of IVF that lured the Mitta-raised medico into specialising in gynecology while he was working in Britain.
“There was a need for good fertility services and I could see all the new technology was going to get developed and there would be a need to provide services in provincial areas as well as metropolitan areas,” Dr Giltrap said.
When he opened Reproductive Medicine Albury in 1988 it was the first regional IVF clinic in Australia.
That service provision and other health work has seen Dr Giltrap awarded an Order of Australia Medal for service to medicine in regional areas.
“I was excited,” Dr Giltrap said of his reaction to the award.
“I’m proud to get it, but there’s a lot of other people that would equally well deserve it.
“In the area of service to medicine there is a lot of people in Albury-Wodonga that have a done a lot for medicine.”
Dr Giltrap’s concern for the wider community’s medical needs has seen him serve the Border Medical Association as chairman from 2004-06 and secretary and vice-chairman from 2000-02.
Then in 2007 he became the co-founder and chairman of the Border Medical Recruitment Taskforce.
“I got involved in that because I recognised the necessity of having an adequate number of good quality doctors in the region,” Dr Giltrap said.
“Albury-Wodonga went from having a workforce crisis to having a perfectly adequate workforce in most areas and there was a lot of hard work by everybody but we turned it around.”
Dr Giltrap said ensuring the Border was seen as desirable for medico’s spouses and families was essential to the taskforce succeeding.
“The key thing is looking after the whole family with schools, banks and socialisation of the whole family, not just the medical practitioner,” he said.
“You had to have the partner want to stay as well as the medical practitioner.”
Dr Giltrap, who grew up on a dairy farm in the Mitta Valley and rode a horse to primary school, became a doctor after studying at Melbourne University.
He was involved in establishing the Albury campus of the University of NSW Rural Clinical School in 2000 and forming the Border Pathology Service in 2010.
Dr Giltrap has chaired the Mitta Muster Sports Precinct since 2014 and helped other organisations.
