Born 16th August 1940 in Jhansi, India
Died 5th April 2023 in Rotherham, from complications following a stroke.
Professor Chandu Bardhan was a Madras graduate who won a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford and became a leading British gastroenterologist, developing a successful clinical and research programme and founding a research charity from his base in Rotherham, a borough of which he became Citizen of the Year and a Freeman.
Karna Dev Bardhan, known to all as Chandu, came from a medical family, his father being an Army pathologist who was to became the first Dean of the Indian Armed Forces Medical College. He started his medical training in 1957 at the Christian Medical College Vellore. A brilliant scholar, he won all the prizes, graduating top of his year from Madras University in 1963 with the medal for the Best Outgoing Student. The next year he won a Rhodes Scholarship and left for Oxford, where he completed his DPhil in 1965 on studies on Intrinsic Factor, under Witts and Beeson. In 1970 he passed the MRCPUK and, after training posts at the Hammersmith Hospital with CC Booth and at the Royal Hospital in Sheffield, in 1973 he was appointed consultant in general medicine and gastroenterology at the age of 32 years at Rotherham District General Hospital (RDGH), with a lecturer appointment at Sheffield University. This was a time when few Indian doctors obtained consultant posts. In due course he was elected Fellow of both London and Edinburgh Royal Colleges of Physicians and he was appointed to a personal chair at Sheffield in 2003.
Following a glittering undergraduate and postgraduate career, many doctors might have been disappointed not to obtain a teaching hospital post. Chandu saw it as an opportunity. He single-handedly built up a gastroenterology clinical service and research unit which became a centre of excellence both nationally and internationally. He collaborated with the pharmaceutical industry, using the funds to build up his team of laboratory staff, nurses and secretaries to support the research projects. Research grants were used to fund Fellows for postgraduate degrees. As management of the hospital changed, the funds were put into a regulated charity, The Bardhan Research and Education Trust (BRET). A total of 54 grants had been awarded up to his retiral in 2014. The work of BRET now continues at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals.
Throughout his career, Chandu was guided by the motto of the Christian Medical College in Vellor, ‘Not to be ministered unto, but to minister’. He loved his work; his infectious enthusiasm motivated and inspired his staff and students, and he was much loved by his patients. His enquiring mind and breadth of vision, together with his willingness to help, drew people to work with his team in Rotherham. His junior staff were well trained and supported to go forward. He often said that the accomplishments of the BRET-supported people and his other young trainees had given him far greater joy than anything he himself had achieved, and that he was immensely proud of them. His rigour in clinical practice and research, and his compassion and care in the wellbeing of his patients, were paramount. His research resulted in hundreds of publications, ranging from fundamental mechanisms of GI disease to epidemiology and treatment trials. Notably, he latterly published constructive studies and observations on the problems of overseas graduates coming to work in the NHS.
From the age of 42 he was hit by serious cardiovascular problems, requiring stents and bypass operations, but this did not prevent him from wholeheartedly undertaking clinical and research work, continuing to publish into his late 70s. He was the first ever recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the British Society of Gastroenterology. Alastair McKinlay, a Past-President, commented “ With the death of Prof. Karna Dev Bardhan, we have lost a man who in many respects epitomised all the things that are good about our profession … Chandu treated people with genuine respect and politeness, whatever their station, whether registrar or professor, doctor or nurse. As a consequence, those whom he worked with and whose lives he touched, usually emerged stronger and went on to realise their true potential. He invested time in people, and that investment paid dividends many times over”.
Chandu was honoured by the town of Rotherham as Citizen of the Year. He was made a Freeman of the Borough and appointed OBE for his service to medicine. He is survived by Gouri, his wife of 51 years, a retired consultant haematologist whom he met at medical school, his son, Satyajeet, a philanthropy strategist, his daughter, Suchitra, a paediatric gastroenterologist, and his three grandchildren.
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Anthony Seaton