Dilip Raje was a former consultant surgeon in Jamaica and senior lecturer at the University of the West Indies. He was born in Gwalior, India, on 26 October 1936, the son of Raghunath Raje, a professor of English literature, and Vaidehi née Kotwal, a headmistress. He was educated at the Aryan Education Society’s School and Anand College, Bombay, where he matriculated with a distinction in mathematics in 1951. He then went to Victoria College, Gwalior, where he graduated in science in 1953, before entering Vikram (now Jiwaji) Medical College, Gwalior, qualifying in 1958. After a year as a house surgeon, he spent two years as a research assistant at his medical college, where the principal, Balkrishna Rao, was a great influence. He then went to England to specialise in surgery, working first at the General Hospital in Sunderland as a senior house officer and then as a registrar in Dryburn Hospital, Durham. He then held posts at the Royal Infirmary and Ronkswood hospitals, Worcester. In 1972 he went to Jamaica, working as a registrar at Kingston Public Hospital for two years. There he was singled out by Sir Harry Annamunthodo and appointed consultant to the University Hospital of the West Indies, being promoted to senior consultant surgeon and lecturer in surgery, and then senior lecturer. His surgical work, which was characterised by uncompromising thoroughness, included highly selective vagotomy, but was mainly centred on cancer. From 1985 to 1987 he was professor of surgery at the National University of Malaysia and there he set up the Malaysian Breast Cancer Rehabilitation Group. He returned to his post in Jamaica, where he became dean of the faculty of medicine in 1991. He attended courses in the UK on hospice care, at St Christopher’s Hospice and Birmingham, and on retirement from the University of the West Indies in 1997 returned to the UK to work as a consultant in palliative medicine and as clinical director of the Myton Hamlet Hospice, Warwick. He was appointed as a clinical tutor at Birmingham University in 1998 and to the Leicester Medical School in 2002. Raje was an honorary consultant to the Jamaica Cancer Society and the Missionaries of Charity, one of Mother Teresa’s foundations. Also in Jamaica, he founded the Hospice Homecare Centre, the Stoma Association and Reach to Recovery – a group for breast rehabilitation. On his return to England, he became a lay member of the Patient Liaison Group of the Royal College of Physicians, in which capacity he was a member of working parties which formulated the RCP response to the European Commission. On its foundation he became a keen member of the Senior Fellows Association of our College. His keen interest in cancer care helped him with his own battle with leukaemia, which was diagnosed three months before his retirement in 2001. He outlined his experience in the seventeenth Sir Harry Annamunthodo memorial lecture, describing the isolation he felt (“no trees, no pets, no birds”), the weight loss and some of the insensitive remarks made by the members of the medical team. Finally, he achieved remission and life became “less complicated”. Living with cancer, he found, meant no procrastination, no long term plans. When he suffered a relapse in 2005 he once again adopted a philosophical approach which helped him through more chemotherapy treatment. In May 2007, he was diagnosed with colon and prostate cancer and, after palliative surgery, was cared for by colleagues in Myton Hamlet Hospice. He spent his final weeks at home in the Lake District, where he had moved after his retirement, being cared for by his wife and daughter. He married Maureen Clasper, a nurse whom he met in Sunderland, in 1966. They had one daughter, Fiona, who became a senior lecturer in transport. A keen cricketer in his youth, he continued to follow cricket, and attended the world cup final in Barbados in April 2007 shortly before the onset of his last illness. He died on 7 September 2007.