Late last year saw the opening of a new hospital in the state of Kurunegala in Sri Lanka. “The opening ceremony was terrific,” says Professor Sir David Weatherall at the University of Oxford. “The children who will be attending the hospital got up at dawn to light a wood fire, and placed a cauldron of milk over the fire. When the milk boiled over, it symbolised that the evil spirits had left the building.” To make sure they were well and truly gone, after the Sri Lankan Minister of Health had officially opened the hospital, a group of Buddhist monks spent the night chanting prayers to bless the building.

The party in Sri Lanka was possible because Professor Weatherall decided to forgo his party in London when he retired as a Governor of the Wellcome Trust in 2000. “They usually give Governors a farewell party or dinner,” he explains. “So I asked if I could miss the dinner and put the money towards the hospital in Sri Lanka. In the event they gave me enough money to build the hospital – significantly more than I imagine they usually spend on a Governor’s farewell dinner.”

Professor Weatherall found a retired architect who offered to design the hospital for free – and the project was underway. Then, by a stroke of good fortune, the Sri Lankan government stepped in and offered to pay for some of the building, which meant Professor Weatherall could devote his ‘retirement party’ money to equipping it.

The new hospital is dedicated to the treatment of thalassaemia, a genetic blood disease common in parts of Asia and the Mediterranean that affects haemoglobin production. The severe form of the disease, thalassaemia major, occurs when a child inherits a gene for thalassaemia from both parents. It causes severe anaemia and without regular blood transfusions many children do not survive into adulthood.

Professor Weatherall first became involved in thalassaemia in Kurunegala seven years ago, when he gave a lecture at the Sri Lankan College of Physicians. “A local paediatrician, Dr Shanthimala de Silva, had started to transfuse children systematically with thalassaemia major. But there are many types of this disease and she didn’t know which types they had, and how they were best managed, so she asked for my help.”

Professor Weatherall collected samples from children with thalassaemia from all over the island and took them back to his laboratory in Oxford for analysis. “When we looked at the genes involved, we found that about a third of these children had a potentially milder form of the disease. People with this milder form seem to be able to adapt to the degree of anaemia, and grow and function at low haemoglobin. They work on farms up to the age of 40 or 50. So we were able to stop regular transfusions in people with this type of thalassaemia. As well as improving their quality of life enormously, that also meant we could focus our efforts on the people who do need treatment.”

The research programme Professor Weatherall set up seven years ago is continuing to flourish. “We want to better understand the milder forms of thalassaemia in Asia, and try to develop some much more rational approaches to their management.” The plan is to set up a series of treatment and screening centres around the island, linked to a central diagnostic and research laboratory at the University of Kelaniya in Colombo. Ultimately, the network will reach right across Asia, linking countries that have expertise in thalassaemia with those that don’t.

The thalassaemia project shows how a scientific approach to healthcare can be introduced alongside traditional thinking: “Having raised further funds to build a central diagnostic laboratory for thalassaemia, I was supposed to lay the foundation stone at the University of Kelaniya when I was there in March,” recalls Professor Weatherall, “but the astrologists said it wasn’t a good day, so I couldn’t.”