Rudy George Henri (Rudi) Vonsée (December 29, 1926, in

Paramaribo Paramaribo ( , , ) is the capital city, capital and largest city of Suriname, located on the banks of the Suriname River in the Paramaribo District. Paramaribo has a population of roughly 241,000 people (2012 census), almost half of Suriname's p ...

– April 25, 2016, in

Geldrop Geldrop is a town in the Dutch province of North Brabant. It is in the municipality of Geldrop-Mierlo, around 5km east of Eindhoven's city centre. Geldrop was a separate municipality until 2004, when it merged with Mierlo. As of 2023, Geldrop ...

) was a

Suriname Suriname, officially the Republic of Suriname, is a country in northern South America, also considered as part of the Caribbean and the West Indies. It is a developing country with a Human Development Index, high level of human development; i ...

se physician and politician. In 1946 his mother made an official request to change his surname from Balinge to Vonsée. In 1950 he came to the Netherlands and two years later he returned to Suriname as a medical graduate. He worked there as a company doctor at Billiton and was a general practitioner in Paramaribo from 1956 to 1961. He then left for the Netherlands again to specialize as a

gynecologist Gynaecology or gynecology (see American and British English spelling differences) is the area of medicine concerned with conditions affecting the female reproductive system. It is often paired with the field of obstetrics, which focuses on pre ...

. In 1966 Vonsee started working at the academic hospital in Paramaribo and from 1968 he was temporarily director-physician of a regional hospital in

Nieuw-Nickerie Nieuw Nickerie. Retrieved 17 November 2009. is the third largest city in Suriname with a population estimated at . It is the capital city of the Nickerie district, and the terminus of the East-West Link. Nieuw Nickerie lies on the mouth of the N ...

. At the end of 1969 he became the Minister of Health on behalf of the

Progressive Surinamese People's Party The Progressive Surinamese People's Party (, PSV) was a political party in Suriname. The party was a member of the Christian Democrat Organization of America. The party was founded in August 1946 by, among others, Father Jozef Weidmann and Coen O ...

(PSV), stipulating that he could also remain somewhat active as a gynecologist. Two years later, he quite suddenly left politics and started working as a gynecologist at the St. Gregorius Hospital in

Brunssum Brunssum (; ) is a Municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality and a town in the province of Limburg (Netherlands), Limburg in the Netherlands. The municipality of Brunssum has residents as of . Brunssum was a center of coal mining until 197 ...

, Limburg.Limburgsch Dagblad, 1971-12-29
/ref> He then indicated that he wanted to go for a PhD. Vonsee passed away in 2016 at the age of 89.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Vonsee, Rudi 1926 births 2016 deaths 20th-century Surinamese politicians Politicians from Paramaribo Surinamese physicians