In parts of West Africa, the Scottish reconstructive surgeon Dr Martyn Webster was not known by his titles or professional appointments. He was known simply as Papa Webster.

It was not a nickname given lightly. In the clinical and cultural worlds he worked in, such names are reserved for people who stay, who teach, and who return. Not visitors. Not benefactors. Not saviours. But elders.

On one of his later visits, a younger surgeon introduced him to the ward staff before he could speak. “This is Papa Webster,” he said, as if explanation were unnecessary. Someone laughed. Someone else nodded. Webster sat down, listened, and let the work proceed without him at the centre. The name stayed.

Webster had a long career in plastic and reconstructive surgery in the United Kingdom, linked to Canniesburn in Glasgow, one of the major centres of the specialty. He held senior professional leadership roles and was widely respected within his field. When he retired from NHS practice, however, he did not retire from medicine itself. He reduced it to what mattered.

What he left behind were institutions, administrative burden, and professional noise.
What he kept were judgement, teaching, patience, and the wish to pass skills on.

Through his work with ReSurge Africa, Webster became deeply involved in reconstructive surgery and surgical training in Ghana and Sierra Leone. His focus was not short-term missions or high-volume operating. It was capacity building: training local clinicians, supporting regional training pathways, and helping establish services that could function independently.

Ghana became a regional training hub, particularly linked to Korle Bu Teaching Hospital in Accra. Sierra Leone followed, with sustained involvement at Holy Spirit Hospital in Makeni from 2009 onwards. Training of Sierra Leonean clinicians was supported through ReSurge Africa, including funded periods of training in Ghana before return to local practice.

Burns care was a particular concern. Mortality was high. Resources were limited. The problems were neither subtle nor glamorous. The work required systems thinking, repetition, and persistence rather than technical display. This suited him.

What distinguished Webster’s approach was restraint. At a time when global health increasingly rewards visibility and volume, he worked in the opposite direction. He prioritised training over throughput, presence over performance, and structures over individuals. When he stopped travelling, the work did not stop. That was the measure of success.

He continued this work well into retirement. Documented teaching visits and service reviews occurred into his mid-seventies, with a gradual transition from operating to mentoring and advisory roles. He stayed long enough to be useful, and stepped back early enough to let others lead.

Those who knew him only through his professional life might imagine a man of restraint and seriousness. His family describes something richer. Webster was remembered for his sense of fun, charm, generosity, and kindness. He was a legendary host, known for memorable parties and an ease with people. He gathered others naturally and enjoyed doing so.

This was not incidental. Long-term service in difficult environments is rarely sustained by endurance alone. It is sustained by warmth, humour, and emotional replenishment. Webster did not practise humanitarian medicine as sacrifice. It reads instead as continuity – an extension of a life already full of relationships, conversation, and curiosity.

He died peacefully on Sunday, 25 January, after a long illness. His family asked that no flowers be sent, but that donations be made to ReSurge Africa, a charity close to his heart.

In the end, his legacy is not best measured in titles, publications, or case numbers. It lives in the clinicians he trained, the services that continue without him, and the quiet confidence of systems strengthened rather than dependent. He showed that a doctor can step away without shrinking, serve without spectacle, and remain joyful without denial.

Not every doctor has his specialty, or his path. But his life suggests something broader: that retirement from medicine need not be an erasure. It can be a narrowing toward what matters most – experience offered freely, work done without noise, and a life that remains generous to the end.

In West Africa, he became known not for what he achieved, but for who he was when he returned.
Papa Webster is not a professional accolade. It is a human one – and it endures.

Paul Alexander Wolf