Sir Patrick Eisdell Moore
It was a sobering thought that our work had the power to improve people’s lives by facilitating promotion at work, by restoring companionship in marriage, and simply by making people happier.
Sir Patrick Eisdell Moore Kt, OBE, was an eminent Ear, Nose and Throat Surgeon and founder of the Deafness Research Foundation in New Zealand. A true visionary, humanist and leader, he had a profound effect on the evolution of the ENT surgical specialty and treatment of ear disease and hearing loss in children and adults in New Zealand.
Sir Patrick had a very strong interest in early detection and treatment of middle ear disease in Māori children, especially in rural New Zealand, running annual clinics for local children with ear disease on the East Cape and later introducing mobile ear clinics to treat ear disease in children. He also led the introduction of cochlear implants to New Zealand and helped establish the New Zealand cochlear implant programme and the Hearing House, that has provided habilitative and educational support for deaf children with implants for the last 20 years.
His vision, that clinical advances must be underpinned by excellence in basic and clinical sciences, led to the formation of the Deafness Research Foundation which has facilitated and funded deafness research in New Zealand for five decades. Naming the Centre after Sir Patrick acknowledges the roots of ear and hearing research in New Zealand and the eminent position he held as a pioneering New Zealander.
