Elia Dayan, known as Eliot, was a consultant general surgeon at the Ingham Infirmary and South Shields General Hospital. He was born in Cairo, Egypt in 1925 and studied medicine at Cairo University, qualifying in 1949. In July 1949 he went to England and worked at various hospitals in London, training as a surgeon, including as a resident surgical officer at East Ham Memorial Hospital. He gained his FRCS in 1954. In July 1958 he was appointed as a senior casualty officer at the Ingham Infirmary in South Shields. Four years later, he was turned down for a consultant’s post there and immigrated to Canada. But in Canada he was frustrated to find he was unable to practise surgery. In 1964 he returned to South Shields, where he was appointed as a consultant surgeon to Ingham Infirmary, later working at the General Hospital. He retired in 1990. In his early years he undertook all forms of trauma and general surgery before subspecialisation. He introduced new ways of performing bowel surgery and trained many doctors and nurses from the UK and abroad. Dayan died on 29 August 2020 in his home. Predeceased by his wife Ginnette (née Sakal), whom he had married in Egypt, he was survived by his four children and 12 grandchildren (including four doctors).