Retiring doctor will carry on working
Last updated 19:24, Thursday, 30 October 2008
SURGEON Nimal Jayatilaka has retired from the West Cumberland Hospital and the Territorial Army but is determined to keep working.
Mr Jayatilaka has been consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist at the West Cumberland in Whitehaven for 11 years and a major in the TA’s medical corps since 1991.
He is also medical officer for the Cumbria Army Cadet Force and a Justice of the Peace, serving as a magistrate on the Workington bench.
He served in the Sri Lankan Army, in the Ceylon Army Medical Corps, from 1966 to 1978.
He has served in Kosovo, Bosnia and Iraq and represented his unit on five of the annual Nijmegen Marches – a 100-mile march through Holland.
Mr Jayatilaka, 67, of Simonscales Lane, Cockermouth, says despite his age he is not interested in retiring.
He wants to continue work as a civilian consultant and in the Territorial Army.
Mr Jayatilaka has been researching and undergoing training in genito-urinary medicine and would like to become a unit GUM physician.
He was born in Sri Lanka – formerly Ceylon – and came to Britain in 1979, leaving behind a life of affluence and privilege.
His father, who changed the family name from the Portuguese Perez, was one of the founders of the first political party set up to obtain freedom for Ceylon.
Mr Jayatilaka was one of 10 children. “My father wanted all his children to become doctors,” he said.
Mr Jayatilaka came to Britain to do a post-graduate course.
He said: “I had been a voracious reader when I was young – Dickens, Shakespeare, Thackeray, I read them all.
“I had formed my ideas of Britain through them and I have to admit my first impression was that I was horrified at how dirty the streets were.”
He spent from 1980 to 1982 in Leamington Spa and he met university student Fiona Cumming, who worked on the hospital switchboard. She became his wife.
She is now programme director, animal health, for Defra.
The couple have four children.
Mr Jayatilaka was supposed to retire at the age of 65 but negotiated a further year.
He is determined that his career is not yet over and that there will be some way that he will continue to work both in the army and in the National Health Service.
