Surgeon who headed three university departments on three continents

The sultanate of Oman, on the southwestern tip of the Arabian peninsula, has a health service that is the envy of the Arabian Gulf and beyond. In 1988, in an article titled “Oman: leaping across the centuries,” BMJ editor Richard Smith, then assistant editor, wrote appreciatively about the achievements of Oman's health service (BMJ 1988;297: 540-4). He said that with the help of oil revenue, Oman's ruler, Sultan Qaboos, had brought the Omanis “through developments that took a thousand years in Europe in less than 20 years. He has given his people free health and education services, and, remarkably, he seems to have created this modern state without …