Alban Barros D'Sa was a consultant general surgeon at University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust. He was born in Nairobi, Kenya, into a Catholic family originally from Goa. Barros D'Sa later moved with his parents to Kisumu on Lake Victoria, where he went to school. He knew he wanted to become a doctor, but family circumstances meant he had to leave school after O levels, study at Nairobi Teacher Training College and become a teacher at the age of just 18. It was only after five years of teaching and having supported his brothers and sisters through their education that Barros D'Sa felt able to go to medical school. In 1960, he went to London to study A levels at West Ham College, and two years later was accepted into Bristol University Medical School. He paid his way by working night shifts during the holidays in a factory and cleaning machinery. He won prizes in surgery, obstetrics and gynaecology, ENT medicine and ophthalmology, and qualified in 1967. He was a house officer at Bristol Royal Infirmary, then spent a year as a demonstrator and was subsequently a senior house officer at Bristol Royal Infirmary, Southmead Hospital and Frenchay Hospital. At Frenchay he worked with the thoracic surgeon Ronald Belsey, which started his interest in oesophageal surgery. He gained his fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh in 1972. He then went to the Royal Postgraduate Medical School and Hammersmith Hospital, London, as a Pfizer research fellow, tutor in surgery and honorary senior registrar. From 1975 to 1979 he was a senior registrar in general and vascular surgery at University Hospital of Wales, Cardiff and the Singleton Hospital, Swansea. In 1979, he was appointed as a consultant surgeon in Coventry and Rugby. He began as a general and vascular surgeon, but later specialised in laparoscopic, upper gastrointestinal, thyroid and parathyroid surgery. After training with Joseph Petelin in Kansas, he introduced laparoscopic general surgery to Coventry and Warwickshire in 1990. Also in 1990, he became an examiner in general surgery for the FRCS (and later MRCS) exam at the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. He was also a tutor on and then the convenor of laparoscopic surgery courses at the Royal College of Surgeons of England. In 1997, he was awarded an FRCS *ad eundem* by the Royal College of Surgeons of England. He was also an examiner in surgery for the universities of Leicester and Warwick, and a surgical tutor for Rugby. He retired from his NHS post in October 2002, but continued in private practice until 2008. In retirement, he was able to travel with his wife and spent time with his family, despite poor health. Alban Barros D'Sa died on 24 January 2015 whilst on holiday in Grenada. He was 77. He was survived by his wife, Gwenda (née Davies), whom he married in 1972, and their two children, Sonia and Ian, both of whom have followed him into medicine.