Alan Tadashi Otaki
BMJ 2019; 364 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.l584 (Published 07 February 2019) Cite this as: BMJ 2019;364:l584
- Michael Parkinson
Alan Alan Tadashi Otaki was born in Middlesbrough. He served in the Royal Air Force from 1939 to 1946 and after he was demobbed decided to study medicine. He learnt basic sciences and satisfied matriculation requirements at Battersea Technical College before going to St George’s.
Most of his junior posts were at hospitals in west London and involved a variety of subjects. He was registrar (1956-8) at the South Middlesex Hospital for Infectious Diseases, lecturer in chemical pathology (1958-60) at St George’s, and medical registrar (1960-1) and senior medical registrar (1961-69) at the West London Hospital.
His focus on gastroenterology is shown by a range of publications while he was at the West London and membership of the British Society of Gastroenterology.
He brought back from Japan the first fibrescope gastro camera to be used in British clinical practice and first tried it out on his wife, Lorna, in their kitchen in Ealing.
Appointed consultant physician specialising in gastroenterology to Medway Health District in February, 1969, he was also physician to the diabetes clinic at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, Rochester, and physician to the intensive care unit at Medway Hospital, a unit he had set up.
At Medway Hospital he was clinical tutor in the postgraduate centre, organising and taking part in programmes of lectures and meetings for hospital doctors and general practitioners. He also lectured nurses in training and those at the post diploma level.
In 1979 he was appointed to the Riyadh Military Hospital as consultant physician in gastroenterology and later to the National Guard King Khalid Hospital, Jeddah. He was senior physician and deputy medical director, and the emphasis of the position was setting up a new hospital. He left Saudi Arabia in 1985.
Back in England, Alan worked in health screening for BUPA. In retirement he maintained lifelong interests in his Japanese roots, music, modern history, nature, art and poetry.
He kept his sense of humour and his interest in medical developments, dying after a mercifully short final illness, at his former family home with his daughters around him.
Consultant physician (b 1922; q St George’s Hospital Medical School 1953; MD, FRCP Lond), died from leukaemia on 26 July 2015