Britain grieves the sudden demise of Dr Kailash Chand OBE

Tuesday 27th July 2021 14:47 EDT
 

During the late evening of July 26, Dr Kailash Chand OBE’s son Dr Aseem Malhotra tweeted that his father had suffered a cardiac arrest in Manchester after central chest pain. A few hours later, Britain lost one of the pioneers in medicine. He was 73. 

 

Dr Kailash Chand OBE was the Honorary Vice President of BMA, Ex-deputy chair of BMA council & chair of NHS trust. Tributes poured in from all medical bodies like BMA, BAPIO and reputed doctors who were extremely fond of Dr Chand. 

 

Kailash was born in Shimla, in Northern India, in 1948. His father worked on the Indian railways and Kailash was educated in Punjab. He graduated in medicine from the Punjabi University Patiala and was employed as a medical officer at Kurukshetra University. Kailash was already married with two sons before coming to the UK to take up a clinical attachment at the Alder Hey Hospital in Liverpool and also to study Tropical Medicine at Liverpool University.  

 

He intended to return to his family once he had improved his qualifications. However, he decided to remain after his wife and children joined him in the UK and saw for themselves the high degree of care and attention his older son, who was born with Down’s Syndrome, received. Dr Chand became the first Asian to be elected as Deputy Chair of the British Medical Association Council (BMA) representing 150,000 doctors in the UK. 

 

Kailash worked for 25 years as a GP in Ashton under Lyne, receiving various accolades such as ‘Dedicated Doctor of the Year’ by Doctor magazine and ‘GP of the Year’ from the Royal College of General Practitioners. He was also a Senior Fellow of the British Medical Association and received an OBE for his services to the NHS. He had retired both as a GP and as Chair of Tameside and Glossop Primary Care Trust. His wife Dr Anisha Malhotra passed away in the year 2018. 

 

Even during his last hours, Dr Chand did campaign against the issues that bothered the NHS health care workers. He mentioned in one of his tweets addressed to Sajid Javid to ‘Stop “cowering” from Covid is the language of “stupidity combined with arrogance and a huge ego!”’ calling his apology meaningless. 

 

The fact that the NHS was etched in his heart reflected in one of his most memorable last tweets where he said: “Lesson for life- Actions speak louder than words. We can apologize over and over but if our actions don't change, the words become meaningless...! "Start the Change."..” 


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