About Ivan Toms
Ivan Peter Toms was a South African physician, who battled the Apartheid era government as a prominent anti-Apartheid and anti-conscription activist. He opposed conscription by the South African Defence Force, and was a co-founder of the End Conscription Campaign. He ran a clinic in the Crossroads shanty town where he was the only physician for 60,000 people. He went on a hunger strike in 1985 after the government decided to bulldoze the settlement. Toms was also involved with gay rights activism in South Africa and was a founding member of the Lesbians and Gays Against Oppression. At the time of his death in 2008, Toms was serving as the Director of Health for the city of Cape Town, South Africa. South African President Thabo Mbeki awarded Ivan Toms with the bronze Order of the Baobab in 2006 for his stance against Apartheid and his public service for South Africans in need. In 1991, at the end of the Apartheid era, Toms became the national co-ordinator of the National Progressive Primary Healthcare Network, which developed health programmes in informal settlements.
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