Sam Galbraith, who has died aged 68, was a brilliant neurosurgeon who channelled commitment to the NHS into politics as a Labour MP and health minister before, in 1999, becoming a founding member of the Scottish parliament. From a Clydeside industrial community, he was driven by the youthful knowledge that while he went on to study and fulfil his ambitions, many schoolfriends just as clever had no such opportunity. His political career was all the more remarkable since he was reputed to be the world's longest surviving lung transplant patient.
He was elected MP for Strathkelvin and Bearsden in 1987, winning the seat, which included some of Scotland's leafiest suburbs, from the Conservatives. Two years later, he was diagnosed with fibrosing alveolitis and, with days to live, received a lung transplant. Ten hard years of opposition were scarcely suited to Sam's condition but he had his reward in 1997 when he became health minister in the Scotland Office under Donald Dewar. It was a time when the NHS, in Scotland as elsewhere, had suffered much uncertainty and Sam was the ideal man to affirm basic principles and restore morale through investment in hospitals and frontline services.
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