Marius Barnard (surgeon)

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Marius Stephanus Barnard (3 November 1927 – 14 November 2014) was a South African cardiac surgeon and inventor of critical illness insurance.[1][2]

Barnard was a member of the team headed by his brother Christiaan Barnard that performed the world's first human-to-human heart transplantation in 1967.[3] Specifically, he was one of the surgeons who removed the heart from donor Denise Darvall at Groote Schuur Hospital.[4][5] After a 2009 documentary film Hidden Heart suggested that Hamilton Naki removed the donor heart, Barnard was quoted as describing the film as "rubbish, a joke, it’s a total distortion of the facts"[6] and as stating that Naki was at the time "in his bed, about 8 km away from Groote Schuur".[7]

Barnard was motivated by the financial hardship he saw his patients suffer after he had treated their critical illnesses to convince the South African insurance companies to introduce a new type of insurance to cover critical illnesses. Barnard argued that, as a medical doctor, he can repair a man physically, but only insurers can repair a patient's finances.[8] On 6 August 1983 the first critical illness insurance policy was launched.[9]

Barnard was a member of the South African parliament between 1980 and 1989, for the Progressive Federal Party - one of the few political parties that opposed apartheid. He later acted as a technical consultant for Scottish Widows.[3] Barnard received many awards for his contributions to medicine and humanity, and was voted in the top 25 most influential people in the field of health insurance and protection.[10]

He died on 14 November 2014 after battling with prostate cancer.[11][12]

References

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