My father, Sanjeev Datt Sharma, who has died aged 66 from long-term complications due to Covid-19, was a consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist who specialised in IVF and worked in the NHS for nearly 40 years.
Originally from India, he was born in New Delhi, the eldest of four children of Balkishen Datt, a civil servant, and Sushila (nee Sharma), a homemaker. After attending Central school in the town of Roorkee, he read medicine at the University of Delhi before becoming a doctor at various hospitals, including at Safdarjung hospital in Delhi. He married Deepali Das in 1984, and they emigrated to the UK shortly afterwards, settling in Liverpool.
In the UK Sanjeev worked as a doctor in hospitals in Whitehaven, Cumbria, and Falkirk, Stirlingshire, before taking up a role as a senior registrar in Liverpool from 1986 onwards. In that post he served various hospitals that have become part of what is now the Liverpool Women’s NHS Foundation Trust, and in 1992 he became a consultant at Southport and Ormskirk hospital, where he stayed for the rest of his working life and was involved in conducting IVF procedures.
He also did complex gynaecological surgery, including caesarean sections, and helped to bring thousands of babies into the world, of which a small but significant proportion were named after him. His other great professional interest was medical education, and he taught and examined students for the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in London on a part-time basis for many years.
Sanjeev was also a committed socialist and political activist. He campaigned for the local Labour party in Sefton, especially on the need for adequate funding for the NHS and against privatisation of health services. He spoke often about how comprehensive healthcare, free at the point of use, was the best thing about his adopted country and was proud to be part of it.
Outside of work Sanjeev loved art, cinema and above all, cream tea scones. He took photos everywhere he went, and had threatened repeatedly to take up the saxophone, although luckily for the rest of us he never quite got round to it.
He contracted Covid-19 in April 2020 as a result of his work with Covid-positive patients. While on a ventilator in intensive care he had a stroke, causing blindness and cognitive impairment. Later, on a visit to family in New Delhi, he was taken into hospital, where he died. A devout Hindu, his ashes were scattered in the Ganges, to be carried out to sea.
He is survived by Deepali and me.
