Distinguished nurse and humanitarian awarded honorary doctorate
Sylvia Wright is to be recognised with an honorary doctorate by Leeds Beckett University for her service to the international community.
Ms Wright has spent the last four decades providing healthcare in India through her charity, the Sylvia Wright Trust. She retired in 2023 aged 85 and has since returned to her hometown of Leeds.
“I am greatly honoured by the award of this honorary degree from the university where I worked”
Sylvia Wright
Her career took her from community health in an area of inner-city Leeds to senior tutor in general nursing, district nursing and health visiting at Leeds Polytechnic, now Leeds Beckett University.
In 1982, Ms Wright felt a calling to serve the poor, noted the university. She subsequently sold her house and car, cashed in her NHS pension and set off to India alone.
She then established mobile clinics and support for some of the poorest regions, developed a 180-bed hospital, a boarding school for 200 deaf children, a day centre for up to 100 severely disabled children and a nursing college for up to 120 students. She received an MBE in 1998 and later an OBE.
On receiving an honorary doctorate from Leeds Beckett University, Ms Wright said: “I am greatly honoured by the award of this honorary degree from the university where I worked.
“I am now 86 and have spent the first 46 years of my life in the UK and the next 40 in Tamil Nadu, India,” she said.
“Most of those 40 years were dedicated to serving people who are poor, sick or who have disabilities,” she said. “It has been far from easy.
“Without the generous, regular financial help and support from the Sylvia Wright Trust, it would not have been possible,” she noted.
“Together we have done our best to help… It is humbling constantly to meet people whose life has been transformed in so many ways by the services of our organisation.”
Leeds Beckett vice chancellor Professor Peter Slee said: “Sylvia Wright’s life and career is an example of everything this university hopes for its graduates.
“Sylvia devoted the first part of her career to excellence, developing her practice and teaching others to do the same.”
He added: “After receiving her calling, she then spent over 40 years using her determination, resolve and considerable knowledge to offer expert care to those in the world who needed it most.
Ms Wright will receive her honorary doctorate during Leeds Beckett’s graduation week in July, where over 7,500 students and nearly 29,000 guests will attend ceremonies.
“Sylvia Wright’s life and career is an example of everything this university hopes for its graduates”
Peter Slee
Born in West Yorkshire in 1938, she first trained as a nurse at the Leeds General Infirmary, then as a midwife at Hyde Terrace Maternity Hospital, before becoming a sister tutor.
Later, she settled in the town of Tiruvannamalai in Tamil Nadu, South India. There she first established a mobile clinic which treated over 400 patients a day across scattered villages.
Three years later she acquired her first small hospital to deal with illnesses and endemic diseases previously been left untreated because of the lack of doctors, hospitals, clinics and medicines.
Her own money soon ran out and she was supported at first by friends. This support developed into the Sylvia Wright Trust, with supporters of all faiths from all parts of the UK and overseas.
