Ruth Watson FRCS: Surgeon in Nepal

Abstract

In 1971, I was sent by the British Council to Nepal to teach and to operate. There, in the little town of Pokhra, I met the most extraordinary woman surgeon that I have ever encountered before or since. Her name was Ruth Watson. She was a slimly built, smiling young woman, dressed in a Nepalese sari and speaking to her staff in fluent Nepalese. She had arrived in Pokhra 20 years before, at the age of 25, and established a hospital there. Initially it was constructed out of matting, but this was soon replaced with corrugated iron Nissen huts. Because the metal walls shone in the blazing Nepalese sunshine the hospital came to be called the ‘Shining Hospital’ by the patients, and the name stuck. It served an enormous population from the far flung villages -mostly poor peasant farmers and their families. By the time of my visit, there were about 50 beds, a small operating theatre and a single-bedded labour ward. Ruth told me that she had once delivered two sets of twins synchronously on that one bed!