Hospital Charity Organisation | Children's Hospital Trust

Professor Alastair Millar, Charles FM Saint Professor of Paediatric Surgery at the Red Cross War Memorial Children's Hospital and the University of Cape Town has won international medicine's top paediatric surgery award, the Denis Browne Medal, by the British Association for Paediatric Surgeons which monitors paediatric surgery worldwide.

Prof Millar is the second South African doctor to have won the medal in its 58-year history, the first being the late Professor Jan Hendrick Louw, also of UCT, who won it in 1980. The Denis Browne Gold Medal is named after the late Australian-born British surgeon considered the father of modern paediatric surgery.

On winning the award Prof Millar said that "it is a tremendous accolade for me personally. We regard the award as the highest honour in world paediatric surgery." Prof Millar also said that paediatric surgery at the Red Cross War Memorial Children's Hospital had received "tremendous" recognition abroad.

Millar began working at the Red Cross War Memorial Children's Hospital in 1974. In 2004 he was appointed Head of Paediatric Transplantation at Birmingham Children's Hospital in England, a post he held until 2007 when he returned to South Africa as Head of Paediatric Surgery. He became a member of the British Association of Paediatric Surgeons in 1996.

Charles FM Saint was a British surgeon who established the first surgery school in South Africa in 1920.

On his right is Mr Gordon MacKinlay, president of the British Association for Paediatric Surgeons and Millar's wife, Sue.

For the full article by Junior Bester in the Saturday Weekend Argus click here