Surinder Singh Bakhshi

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."

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 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 1978, around a year into his post, Bakhshi was tasked with leading the operational management of public health and containing community spread of smallpox during the smallpox outbreak in Birmingham. 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. Under the chairmanship of William Nicol, Medical Officer to the Birmingham area, the committee included Henry Bedson and Geddes, in addition to Bakhshi.

In 1977, he was appointed medical officer of environmental health for the Birmingham Area Health Authority. An account of his first year there is given in Mark Pallen's book The Last Days of Smallpox (2018). Bakhshi told him that on the day of the interview, he was told by the reception that "people like him" were not allowed to use the lift so he walked the 13 flights of stairs to his interview in Alpha Tower. He recounted in an oral history and in interviews by Pallen and journalist Sally Williams, that instead of the usual eight interviewers, there was surprise that an Indian had applied for the post and 20 turned up to interview him.

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 1974, he moved to England, where his parents had already settled, and took up a post as registrar in Kingston upon Thames before becoming senior registrar in Gloucestershire, where he resided at Slimbridge.

After completing house jobs Bakhshi's first medical officer post was at a hospital in Mongu, Barotseland. Situated by the Zambezi in Zambia, he treated mostly snakebites and tuberculosis in the Barotse population. 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. In the US, he held a Rockefeller Fellowship at the University of Michigan, from where he completed a masters in public health in 1971. On returning to Zambia, he was appointed regional medical officer and became involved in containing a cholera outbreak among refugees from Mozambique.

After spending his early years in Dar es Salaam among a large Indian community, he gained admission to study medicine in 1960 at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda, from where he graduated in 1965. That year, he married Rajinder Kaur, his childhood sweetheart.

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.

Surinder Singh Bakhshi, known as Surinderjit to his friends, was born in 1937 in Dar es Salaam to emigrants from India, Sohan Singh and Amrit Kaur. His family were Punjabi Sikhs and had origins in Ras Koh Hills, Balochistan (British India) (now in Pakistan), and during the interwar years his parents left to work in East Africa.