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Transplant pioneer Prof John Wallwork has no 'magical' healthcare answer

BBC Prof John WallworkBBC
Prof John Wallwork is stepping down as chair of the Royal Papworth Hospital NHS Foundation Trust

A pioneering doctor whose career is ending said he had no "magical" cure to healthcare problems in the UK.

Transplant surgeon Prof John Wallwork, 77, said people had been given an "expectation of almost immortality".

Prof Wallwork said the NHS was "fundamentally" a "good system" and everyone had to think about healthcare use.

The professor was speaking as he stepped down as chair of a Cambridge NHS trust.

While a surgeon at Papworth Hospital in the city, he performed Europe's first successful heart-lung transplant in 1984 and, in 1986, the world's first heart-lung and liver transplant alongside Prof Sir Roy Calne.

Calne family Sir Roy CalneCalne family
Prof Sir Roy Calne, who worked with Prof Wallwork, died in early January

He retired as a consultant surgeon in 2011 and became chair of the Royal Papworth Hospital NHS Foundation Trust in 2014.

"What we have got now is a problem whereby we have got an elderly population - so the demand has gone up," he told the BBC.

"There are more things we can do, so the demand goes up.

"And people had been given an expectation of almost immortality - which is not right.

"And so we have to work out how we balance all this things."

He said healthcare systems around the world were facing the same problems and medics could not do "everything" all the time for "everybody".

"I have no magical answer on how to solve the health care problems at the moment," he added.

"But we are not alone in this.

"And I think think basically [the NHS] is fundamentally a good system."

The trust announced Dr Jag Ahluwalia was taking over as chair in August.

Dr Ahluwalia said it was an "honour" to succeed Prof Wallwork.

Prof Wallwork said he had been associated with Papworth for more than 40 years and was ending his time at the hospital with a "tinge of sadness".

Sir Roy died aged 93 in early January.

Prof Wallwork said Sir Roy was one of the surgeons who "put liver transplantation on the map".

He described Sir Roy as "one of the giants of transplantation".

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