Fearless consultant physician and scourge of PFI dies

The Herald Scotland

11-05-2025

Died: April 18, 2025
Matthew Dunnigan, who has died aged 93, was a consultant physician at Stobhill Hospital for 27 years who distinguished himself, both in his studies on delivery of health care, and in the clinical arena.
When health leaders in Glasgow were planning a reduction in acute bed numbers in the 1990s, Dr Dunnigan forensically analysed the planning models and showed the health board's plans would not cope with an increasingly frail and elderly population. Sadly, his detailed analysis was repeatedly ignored with the resultant consequences we are all living with today.
The late 1990s was a period of major hospital closures and the building of new hospitals under the exorbitant Private Finance Initiative (PFI) throughout the UK. All of these schemes entailed selling off NHS land and hospitals with major reductions in beds.
Dr Dunnigan extended his forensic analysis of bed planning to Lothian Health Board's plans for the New Edinburgh Royal and many of the new PFI hospital plans in England. He exposed the flawed assumptions regarding bed provisions and in every case the evidence was ignored by the policy makers. His analysis, unlike those of the NHS bed planners, has stood the test of time – the UK now has the lowest hospital bed numbers of all the countries in Europe.
Dr Dunnigan's academic curiosity was also in evidence in the clinical arena where he also distinguished himself. Arguably the most meritorious was his work with severely physically and mentally disabled patients in the long-since-closed Lennox Castle Hospital in the 1980s.
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Dr Dunnigan's attention was drawn to this by observing dehydration in patients being admitted to Stobhill Hospital from Lennox Castle. He suspected that these patients were not being fed adequately. He therefore looked at the intake of the inpatients at that institution and demonstrated severe caloric and nutritional deficiencies, especially in those who were unable to feed themselves.
Correction of this led to the patients gaining weight and being more settled and easier to look after. His findings were eventually accepted by the health board who agreed to provide more staff and better nutrition for the patients.
Dr Dunnigan was also involved in a study looking at the high incidence of rickets in the recently arrived Asian children to Glasgow in the 1960s. In their homeland, the sun provided all the Vitamin D they required but this was not the case in Glasgow's tenement blocks.
Having identified the problem, Dr Dunnigan arranged to have Vitamin D inserted into the flour used to make chapattis, and the rickets all but disappeared. He continued to conduct studies and write about Vitamin D deficiency in South Asians for two decades.
Dr Dunnigan contributed in a number of other clinical areas including unexplained fluid retention in women and Dunnigan's Syndrome which described a rare type of genetic lipid disorder.
Matthew Dunnigan was born in 1931 to what he described as poor but honest parents in a steel house in Clydebank. Matthew continued: 'my parents were both keen on self-improvement, evening classes and 'getting on'.'
His mother taught primary classes of 50-60 children as a 19-year-old until marriage prevented her from continuing. His father, who left school at 15, was self-educated and became a cost accountant.
As a young child Matthew suffered from scarlet fever, which then was a life-threatening illness. This necessitated several months in hospital without any contact with his family. Perversely, this experience was to be repeated in the last years of his life through Covid.
The family moved to Troon during the Second World War and Dr Dunnigan attended Marr College where he was Dux. He entered Glasgow University to study medicine, graduating in 1955. After completing his national service, he chose endocrinology as his specialty. He also completed an MD (with honours) under the guidance of the renowned cardiologist Dr JH Wright.
He was appointed consultant physician at Stobhill Hospital in 1969 and following his retiral in 1996 continued as a senior research fellow at Glasgow University.
His strengths included being a gifted orator, having a wonderful way with words and the ability to back up his arguments with thoroughly analysed data. He was always an inquisitive physician which was to the considerable benefit of his patients.
Within all of these activities, his family were front and centre in his life. He cared lovingly for his wife Anna of 57 years in her final illness. He is survived by his son Matthew and daughter Sarah, both of whom are distinguished academics in Edinburgh.
FRANK DUNN and ALLYSON POLLOCK