AFTER four decades of service in the NHS a North-East brain surgeon is stepping down. But now Newcastle consultant Robin Sengupta hopes the people of the region will help him to realise a lifetime's dream.

MORE than 40 years ago, a nervous, excited young medical student took a momentous decision. After completing his degree in the teeming Indian city of Calcutta, Ram Prasad Sengupta decided he would leave home and start a new life in England.

The NHS, which was just over a decade old, desperately needed more doctors and turned to its former colony for new blood.

In those days, before the era of long-haul aircraft, it was a far from straightforward journey from India to the UK.

"The journey took about 24 days, I travelled by ship from Calcutta to Bombay and then by ship from Bombay to Genoa in Italy, then I got the boat-train to Victoria station in London," remembers Mr Sengupta - dubbed Robin by nurses, a nickname which has stuck - looking back over four decades of service to the people of the North-East as an eminent brain surgeon.

While he was looking forward to making a new start in England, he had to leave behind his fiance, agreeing that she would join him when things were more settled. That, too, was far from straightforward.

"There were so many of us coming from India looking for hospital jobs. There was an open door policy, you didn't even need a visa then," recalls Mr Sengupta, who is due to step down on December 31 this year when he reaches the official NHS retirement age of 65. He is probably one of the longest-serving NHS surgeons still around.

While Mr Sengupta is now a highly-respected specialist, it was a long climb to his present position.

"I was very excited when I first came to the UK but I was still raw from medical school and most of my competitors were already qualified," he says.

After a struggle, he obtained a one year training place at a hospital in Bury, Lancashire. Then in 1962 he made what turned out to be a fateful move to Tyneside.

"I got a job as a casualty officer at Newcastle General Hospital. In those days, Newcastle was quite a drab place and the hospital was almost like a workhouse," he recalls.

Since the 1960s the both the city and the hospital have been "completely transformed", he says.

Working in casualty was hard but it had its funny side. "The doctors got about on bikes because it was spread out. One night I had a phone call at about 4am from the police asking me if I'd I lost my bike," chuckles Mr Sengupta.

"Apparently, after I stitched a patients head, he pinched my bike...the police recovered it and handed it back to me."

Joined by his wife, his ambition was to work as a general surgeon, but this proved difficult. Eventually he got an opening which led him in a completely new direction.

"I was offered the chance to do some work in neurosurgery. I realised the only way to get on was to work hard and impress the consultants."

It worked. A six-month contract came his way, which turned into a long term position. At that stage, he remembers, "I started to fall in love with neurosurgery."

His interest broadened and soon he was attracting international attention through his work and his research.

Then, out of the blue, there was a phone call which could have ended his connection with the North-East.

"I got a phone call from Harvard University in America asking me if I would like to work at the famous Massachusetts General Hospital. At first my colleagues didn't believe me but I thought it was too good an opportunity to miss," he recalls.

But working in Boston was an eye-opener - he learned advanced new brain surgery techniques which he brought back to the UK - he was less impressed by the private American health system.

"I preferred the NHS. It was a different world in the US. I realised I would much rather work in the UK," he says.

It was not just the NHS that lured the surgeon back to the North-East. Since coming to Tyneside he had developed a great fondness for the area and its people.

"When I came in 1962, I was asked whether the Geordie accent would be a problem. I said if I could understand people in Bury, I could understand anything!" he laughs.

"The expression on people's faces is the most important thing and I have found Newcastle to be a wonderful, friendly place," he says. "Really, working here from 1962 to 2002, I can look back and say Newcastle has given me everything."

After operating on an estimated 20,000 patients during his long career, Mr Sengupta could be forgiven for wanting to hang up his surgical gown for good. But as his NHS career comes to a close, a shining new project is on the horizon.

For some years Mr Sengupta has regularly flown back to Calcutta at his own expense to operate on Indian patients with brain disorders. To the surgeon's immense pleasure, many of his consultant colleagues from Newcastle have followed his example.

"So far ten consultants from the neurosciences department have been out to do voluntary work in Calcutta and at least six of our nurses have also worked out there, paying their own air fares and working in their own time," says a grateful Mr Sengupta.

While charitable hospitals exist in the vast hinterland around Calcutta to provide a semblance of general health care, the specialist facilities needed for neurological problems are very poor.

"There are private neurosurgical facilities which most people and the regional government cannot afford," says Mr Sengupta, who estimates that around 300m people - almost six times the population of the UK - have no access to free neurosurgery."

That is when he began to dream of opening his own neurological hospital in West Bengal. "West Bengal is very under-developed. Even people who have money have to got to other parts of India for treatment and if you have a brain injury which needs immediate attention, money will not help you if there are no facilities locally," he says.

That dream has now become a real possibility. After talks with the West Bengal regional government, a parcel of land has been given to Mr Sengupta to build his hospital. A core of Indian doctors has been trained - at Newcastle - by Mr Sengupta and his colleagues and they're raring to go. All that is needed now is the small matter of finding £1.5m to build and equip the new hospital.

"If we can build this place, it will be wonderful. We will be able to look after 300m people," says Mr Sengupta, who clearly sees this as the culmination of his life's work.

After spending an estimated £150,000 of his own money to help his compatriots, he has ploughed another £100,000 into the fighting fund to build the new hospital.

"I have asked my colleagues to donate money and 20 people have said they will help me and that is just in Newcastle," says the surgeon. By using his contacts around the UK and the US, Mr Sengupta hopes to raise around £1m for his Neurosciences Foundation Ltd, a registered charity of which Elizabeth, Duchess of Northumberland, is patron. He is hoping that the remaining £500,000 will be raised in India itself.

"Lots of people I know are sending money. One woman sent me a few hundred pounds. She said it was her holiday money," he says.

"People in the North-East are so generous, I am very confident we will get there."

* Donations can be made to: Neurosciences Foundation Limited, Sortcode 20 59 97, account number 20439568, Barclays Bank, Wingrove City Branch, 44 Westgate Road, Newcastle, NE4 9BN. The foundation is a registered charity (no. 1067627)