Obituary: Gopi Menon, respected and popular consultant whose life was devoted to sick babies
Gopikumar Menon was educated in Madras until he was nine, when his family moved to Yorkshire. Gopi’s father was a consultant paediatrician and his mother specialised initially in gynaecology but pursued a career in community paediatrics.
Gopi’s school education continued in Stockton-on-Tees and Queen Elizabeth Grammar School in Wakefield. From 1973 to 1976 he was a medical undergraduate at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge and in 1976 won the Max Barrett Memorial Prize for a Preclinical Research Project. In 1979 he received an honours degree from the University of Cambridge, having completed his clinical training in St Mary’s Hospital Medical School.
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Hide AdThereafter he worked as a paediatrician in St Mary’s London, Alder Hey Children’s Hospital Liverpool, Guy’s Hospital and Great Ormond Street London. After further training in neonatology in Nottingham, Gopi became a registrar in Peterborough and Leicester.
While Gopi was a senior house officer in Alder Hey he met Val who was studying nursing. They married in 1985 and enjoyed 34 years of happiness together.
In 1988, Gopi became honorary senior registrar in paediatrics in Edinburgh, and in 1994 was appointed to the post of consultant neonatologist at the Simpson Memorial Maternity Hospital. As a consultant, he was to care for the newborn infants in Lothian for 25 years. Gopi worked in the high risk intensive care unit, both in the old Simpson and the new Simpson Centre for Reproductive Health, and was a key part of the leadership which looked after 15,000 very ill babies during his time as consultant.
Gopi was instrumental in setting up new services, including a joint respiratory clinic with the Royal Hospital for Sick Children.
He also showed an unstinting commitment to the wider issues of neonatal follow up for Scotland