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I was born in a small village in St Kitts, where everyone knew everyone. I am one of 12 children, and the first girl in my family. My parents weren’t rich but they sacrificed and paid for me to be educated at the prestigious City High School. After I left school at 18, I worked at an insurance company, a newspaper and in the Ministry of Tourism and Development as a civil servant. One day I saw an advertisement for training as a nurse in England. I felt the time had come for me to fly the nest.
Dad was born in the town of Bharuch, in Gujarat in 1919, a regional centre of commerce on the Namada River. His father, an accountant, ran a company importing coconuts. One of nine children he loved sport especially swimming, which he did surreptitiously against his parents’ wishes after a friend died of drowning.
I was born and bred in Nottingham, but my parents came here in 1962 from Ghana. We were the only Black people on the whole of the street where we lived.
I came from Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia to train in general nursing at Lewisham Hospital in 1966, after secondary school. I came from a family of 12 children. There was no way my family could afford to send me to go overseas, so studying nursing was the only solution to go abroad to explore.
Prakash Sinha was an oncoplastic reconstructive cancer surgeon and the Medical Director of Princess Royal University Hospital and South Sites at the King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. He died in service at the age of 58 in October 2020.
