Surinder Singh Bakhshi

Surinder Singh Bakhshi (born 1937) is a British writer and physician, who in 1977 was appointed medical officer of environmental health to the Birmingham Area Health Authority, where he led the successful contact tracing and quarantine effort in the community during the 1978 smallpox outbreak in the United Kingdom.

Bakhshi received his medical degree from Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda. After completing house jobs he worked at a hospital by the Zambezi in Zambia, before moving to the United States, where he held a Rockefeller Fellowship in public health at the University of Michigan. In 1974, after a medical posting that involved managing an outbreak of cholera among refugees from Mozambique, he moved to England and in 1977 was interviewed for a medical officer appointment in Birmingham. In addition to his efforts in containing smallpox, he dealt with other outbreaks in Birmingham including hepatitis A, hepatitis B, meningitis and typhoid.

In retirement, Bakhshi published Tuberculosis in the United Kingdom: A tale of two nations (2006) and Sikhs in the Diaspora: A Modern Guide to the Practice of Sikh Faith. A Knowledge Compendium for the Global Age (2008).

Early life and education Surinder Singh Bakhshi, (Sometimes misspelled as Bakshi.) was born in 1937 in Dar es Salaam, Tanganyika, to Sohan Singh and Amrit Kaur. His family had its origins in the Ras Koh Hills in Balochistan (now in Pakistan), and during the interwar years his parents left to work in East Africa. That year, he married Rajinder Kaur, his childhood sweetheart. After three years there he moved to the United States after a brief period in managing immunisation programmes in the Zambia and then taking a worldwide tour. On returning to Zambia, he was appointed regional medical officer and became involved in containing a cholera outbreak among refugees from Mozambique. An account of his first year there is given in Mark Pallen's book The Last Days of Smallpox (2018).

After a two-hour interview in which he was hardly asked any questions as the interviewers spent most of the time asking each other questions, he was asked to wait before being informed that a decision was inconclusive, but when he arrived back home he received a call confirming he got the job. He first came to hear of smallpox in Birmingham on 25 August 1978 and the first meeting of the control of smallpox outbreak advisory committee took place that same day.

Of the two main tasks of the committee; finding out how smallpox arose in the first place and identifying and containing spread of smallpox in the community, The containment efforts were successful,

We would like to record our appreciation of the speed and thoroughness with which Dr Nicol, the area Medical Officer, and his staff and also the staff of the Birmingham University medical School reacted to contain the spread of illness when smallpox had been diagnosed. Their action in dealing with the task of tracing isolating and vaccinating all close contacts of Mrs Parker, and in disinfecting all areas of possible contamination was impressive and contributed considerably to preventing a far wider spread of infection.

During his tenure as medical officer in Birmingham, he was responsible for containing other outbreaks including hepatitis A, meningitis, and typhoid.

Later life

In retirement, Bakhshi published Tuberculosis in the United Kingdom: A Tale of Two Nations (2006) and Sikhs in the Diaspora: A Modern Guide to the Practice of Sikh Faith. A Knowledge Compendium for the Global Age (2008).

In Williams' article in The Guardian (2020) during the COVID-19 pandemic on whether the 1978 smallpox outbreak could provide any lessons, Bakhshi's approach was considered personal and locally led, and he explained that "contact tracing and containment are in the genes of any public health doctor."

Selected publications Articles

Books

Footnotes