Christiaan Barnard, the doctor who pioneered heart transplants, died yesterday in Cyprus. The 78-year-old South African, who was known for his anti-apartheid campaigning, had been staying at the five-star Coral Beach Hotel in Paphos, and was lying on a sun lounger reading a book when he expired. Although it was thought that he suffered a heart attack, tests later carried out showed that the retired surgeon's heart was in perfect condition and he died of an asthma attack instead.
Nelson Mandela, the former president of South Africa, last night professed himself to be shocked at the news. “He was one of our main achievers,” he said. “Professor Barnard was very vocal against apartheid. His death is a great loss.”
In December 1967, the charismatic doctor performed the world’s first human heart transplant operation at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town. Although the recipient, Louis Washkansky, lived just 18 days before succumbing to pneumonia, Dr Barnard’s reputation was secure. “On that Saturday I was a surgeon in South Africa, very little known,” he later said. “On Monday I was world renowned.”
As well as mending hearts, Dr Barnard had a reputation for breaking them. The handsome father of six enjoyed a playboy lifestyle, marrying three times and partying with Audrey Hepburn, Sir Richard Burton, Peter Sellers and Sophia Loren, who was reportedly so lovestruck that she invented a pasta dish in his honour. His affair with actress Gina Lollobrigida is said to have contributed to the break-up of his first marriage.
His first marriage, in 1948 to Aletta Louw, lasted 21 years. They split after Christiaan boasted that Ms. Lollobrigida – naked but for a fur coat protecting her modesty – had taken him home in a taxi. A year later, he tied the knot with fashion model Barbara Zoellner, 28 years his junior, but she left him after 12 years and two children, citing his moodiness in the family home. Despite Christiaan’s open love letter to her in a South African newspaper, she refused to get back with him.
In 1988 he married Karin Setzkorn who, at 23 years old, was 42 years his junior. They had first met when she was just 11 years old, at a book signing but, despite two children, now 12 and four years old, they divorced acrimoniously last year as the medical trailblazer was unable to stop his philandering.
In an interview earlier this year, the 78-year-old said: “I’m very heterosexual. I have a lot of women friends, but nothing serious.”
Photo: © Alphapress.com
Photo: © Alphapress.com
Photo: © Alphapress.com
