Farewell to Alastair Sammon
26/09/2008
Consultant Breast Surgeon Alastair Sammon has retired from the Gloucestershire Royal Hospital to continue his research into the cause of oesophageal cancer in Africa.
Mr Sammon, who joined the hospital in 2000 said he would miss his “wonderful” team along with his patients, whom he described as “remarkably inspiring”.
During his time at the GRH he was involved in a number of advances in breast surgery, including reconstructions after mastectomies and more sophisticated methods of dealing with cancerous lymph glands.
Now Mr Sammon is relishing the opportunity to return to research that he began while working in hospitals in Africa.
“I used to spend a lot of time treating people with cancer of the oesophagus over there,” he said.
“Often in the African situation the cancer was untreatable because people came too late.
“I realised the only way to deal with it was to find a cause and try to prevent it.”
Mr Sammon spent a total of 17 years in Africa, working as a general surgeon in the Transkei homeland of South Africa before moving to Kenya to run the church-based Chogoria Hospital.
There he had a budget of £500,000 to cover the acute and public health needs of some 500,000 people.
“We were looking at £1 a head – in the UK we get several hundred times that amount of money,” he said.
“In Africa we were dealing with the medicine of poverty but we could treat about 99% of conditions that came to us.
“Providing reasonably sophisticated care on a shoestring was interesting and different: in the Kenyan hospital we had to generate a lot of our own income. We kept animals, grew trees for heating, made a lot of our own drugs and ran a restaurant!”
Mr Sammon is undertaking his research in conjunction with Cranfield University and the Walter Sisulu University in Transkei and hopes to return to Africa from time to time.
When he is not writing he plans to build a violin, to add to the cello he created from packing cases on his return to the UK in 1995.
“I am looking forward to getting up later and spending more time with my wife Helen, who is the Vicar of St Barnabas Church in Tuffley, and my family,” he said.
For further details please contact Ria Morrison, Communications Officer, on 08454 223120 or ria.morrison@glos.nhs.uk
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