This site is a tribute to Professor David Lloyd. He is much loved and will always be remembered.

David Allden Lloyd was born on May 11th 1940 in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. In his rural childhood home of Dundee, his father and grandfather had been local doctors for both the town and its local township, instilling in David not only a commitment to medicine, but also a deep sense of duty and of community which remained with him throughout his life.

In 1958 he arrived to England to study medicine at King’s College, Cambridge. After initial posts in London and Norwich he spent a year training in Cardiff, where a life-long passion for Welsh rugby was born during frequent trips to Cardiff Arms Park, the soaring pre-match anthems and a mutual antipathy towards the English team bringing back memories of his homeland.

In 1969, he returned to South Africa, taking up a general surgical registrar post in Cape Town’s Groote Schuur Hospital, where he scrubbed with Christiaan Barnard on the some of the world’s first heart transplants. At his next post, at the Red Cross Memorial Children’s Hospital, he met his future wife Carol, fresh from the three-week boat journey from England to Cape Town, who was working there as a nurse and midwife.

Although he would have happily remained in South Africa for the rest of his professional life, the deep societal divisions of Apartheid in the early 1980s were a constant challenge. When an invitation arrived from Professor Mark Rowe to join him as an Associate Professor in Paediatric Surgery in Pittsburgh, he took the difficult decision to leave his beloved homeland, arriving in the USA with his young family in September 1982.

In 1988 he moved for the final time, back to England as Professor of Paediatric Surgery at the University of Liverpool and Alder Hey Children’s Hospital. In his new role he quickly set about rebuilding the department, appointing a highly talented group of young surgeons and engendering a sense of teamwork, comradery and pride remembered by many as defining in their careers. As a clinical academic he published over 100 peer-reviewed publications, with interests ranging from nutrition and metabolism in the surgical newborn, pulmonary pathophysiology in congenital diaphragmatic hernia, trauma prevention and management, the cellular basis of Hirschsprung’s Disease and the surgical oncology of childhood.

In 2001 he was elected president of the British Association of Paediatric Surgeons (BAPS) in 2001, where he set out two main goals: first, to raise the profile of childhood trauma, particularly its prevention; second, to better recognise the large international membership of BAPS, including those from developing countries. The former resulted in the BAPS Trauma Committee, and the latter continues via the BAPS International Congress, as well as annual training fellowships for surgeons from developing countries via the Children’s Research Fund.

In retirement, David continued his philanthropic international work through as a trustee of the Waterloo Partnership, frequently travelling to deliver practical aid and training to healthcare teams in Sierra Leone, as well as trips to Gaza to teach young medical undergraduates there.

Although a proud Liverpudlian for over 35 years, David never lost his passion for his homeland. Fluent in Zulu and Afrikaans, he made with frequent visits back to South Africa and was a keen follower of its rugby and cricket teams. He was also a keen ornithologist - both in the game reserve and his back garden, where a pair of binoculars were always within arm’s reach - and philatelist, holding a collection of thousands of carefully curated stamps from his childhood. David died peacefully at home on Thursday 2nd May 2024 surrounded by his wife Carol, and his four children, Megan, Kate, David (a Paediatric Cardiologist) and Christopher.