Declan O’Keeffe was a surgeon in Kenya. He was born in London on 18 February 1922, the son of Edmond, a furniture salesman, and Jessica Edith née Riches. From St Dominic’s Preparatory School, West Hampstead, he won a ‘free place’ to the Regent Street Polytechnic Secondary School. He later went to Guy’s Hospital on a senior county exhibition and scholarship. At Guy’s he won prizes in haematology and bacteriology and completed house jobs. He then joined the RAF medical service. On demobilisation he was a junior and then senior surgical registrar at Guy’s, before joining the Colonial Medical Service in Kenya as a provincial surgical specialist. After he retired he remained in Mombasa in private surgical practice. He married Isabella McNeill in 1947, by whom he had three sons and a daughter. His eldest son studied medicine at Guy’s. O’Keeffe died on 1 December 2005.