Surgical pioneer Professor Sir Magdi Yacoub speaks at major South Kensington event

Former patients, colleagues and lifelong admirers spontaneously applauded Professor Sir Magdi Yacoub when he spoke at a major South Kensington festival.

Professor Yacoub appeared in front of an audience of nearly 300 people as part of the Great Exhibition Road Festival, to talk about his life’s work, his recently published biography, and what has inspired him as one of the world’s most eminent cardiothoracic surgeons.

Interviewed by long-time friend Dame Mary Archer, the well-known scientist and former chair of the Science Museum, Professor Yacoub talked about the latest developments in transplant medicine and research at Harefield, the hospital where he made his name as a groundbreaking pioneer in the 1970s and 1980s.

The surgeon said he thought more recent work he has been involved in on so-called living heart valves at Harefield promised a very bright future and was a “massive gift to humanity” – which prompted his audience to burst into spontaneous applause.

Professor Yacoub, who carried out Europe’s first combined heart and lung transplant, was applauded again when Dame Mary said it was thought he had now carried out some 3,000 transplants over the course of his long career.

The work of his charity, the Chain of Hope, was also highlighted as well as the heart centre it has funded in his native country, Egypt. The Aswan Heart Centre provides all of its services to its patients free of charge, having been modelled on the NHS – the organisation in which Professor Yacoub spent his career, and which he has always admired.

His charity is also due to open two further such centres this year – one in Cairo, and the other in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda.

Of the future generation of medics he and his work are now producing, Professor Yacoub said: “I am humbled by the young people who I have trained and who now do it much better than me.”

Professor Yacoub was speaking as part of the talks programme at the Great Exhibition Road Festival, the weekend event held in the local area by all the major cultural and scientific institutions in South Kensington, which now attracts more than 50,000 attendees every June.

Royal Brompton – which like Harefield is now part of Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust – last year became the first hospital to join the Exhibition Road Cultural Group, the organisation behind the festival. It now rubs shoulders with other world class institutions such as the V&A, Natural History Museum, Imperial College, and Royal Albert Hall.