A cheap and simple machine that can deliver anaesthetic to patients without the need for electricity or oxygen is currently saving lives in Syria and other war-torn areas across the world - and it was invented by a doctor from Marden.

Dr Roger Eltringham grew up in White Lyon House close to The Unicorn pub in the village centre, was educated at Marden Primary and Cranbrook School, before going off to read medicine at St Andrew’s University in Scotland.

Swerving away from a career as GP, he specialised in anaesthesia, and was appointed consultant anaesthetist at Gloucester Hospital in 1974, a position he held for 36 years.

That appointment led him first to be nominated to sit on the council of his calling’s professional body, the Association of Anaesthetists, in London, and later to be invited to join the World Federation of Societies of Anaesthesiologists (WFSA)

Dr Eltringham said: “Throughout my time at Gloucester I was also the voluntary doctor for the local rugby team - I had always enjoyed the sport and used to play quite a bit myself.

“I found that my experience of organising rugby tours came in quite handy when I was asked to join the association’s international relations committee and was required to take parties of doctors out to encourage best practice in some rather remote corners of the globe.”

It was during these trips that Dr Eltringham became aware that clinics in Africa and Asia might often have an expensive anaesthetic machine sitting unused in the corner.

He said: “Western Governments and aid agencies would donate these expensive bits of kit, costing perhaps £75,000 a time, but they were no good if there was no electricity or oxygen supply available.

“Even if there was electricity, once the machines went wrong, they needed specialist engineers to fix them and these often just weren’t available.”

It was a discussion on the cricket field with a fellow player that first sparked an idea with the doctor.

Dr Eltringham said: “The chap playing in the slips was an ex-Russian naval submarine commander and he told be about the oxygen concentrators they used in their boats.”

Pretty soon, Dr Eltringham had designed a small portable machine that could be used to deliver anaesthetic even if no electricity or oxygen was available.

He said: “It works better with electricity and an oxygen cylinder, but you can get by without by squeezing a bag by hand.”

Dr Eltringham said: “It seemed like quite an important advance, but I had a devil of a job to get anyone interested at first. Obviously all those companies making the expensive machines we use in our hospitals weren’t interested.”

Finally, Dr Eltringham gave a lecture about his invention to the Institute of Electrical Engineers. He said: “Afterwards, one chap came up to me and said: ‘Who’s making this machine?’ and of course the answer was no-one.”

The man, Robert Neighbour, owned a small engineering company in Devon, and the two entered into partnership.

Dr Eltringham said: “Robert had the skills: he improved my design no end and the Glostavent machine was born.”

Dr Eltringham explained he named his invention after his rugby club, but went for a phonetic spelling so as not to confuse non-English speakers.

The machine, which can be carried in a suitcase and set up in two and half minutes, costs only around £13,500 and is now used in 70 countries across the world.

It was used by the Australian Army when they provided emergency relief in field tents to victims of the Philippines hurricane in 2014 and 30 of the machines have been sent to Syria.

Dr Eltringham said: “I had a Syrian doctor phone me up late at night to say they desperately needed my machine, because they had no electricity and were carrying out operations with no anaesthetic.

“We managed to get a machine there, and it was used in the doctor’s house in Homes for seven operations on its first day.”

After retiring from the National Health Service in 2010, Dr Roger Eltringham and his wife Lorna moved back to Marden and they now live in The Old Market, just yards from his boyhood home.

The doctor sings in the church choir, is a member of another village choir, Antiphony, and chairs the regular Men’s Breakfast meetings.

He also told his fellow villagers about his invention and inspired them to form a charity with him.

Safe Anaesthesia Worldwide was founded in 2011 after a meeting at The Unicorn pub. It has so far raised £107,000 which it has used to send Glostavent machines to the most needy parts of the world.

Dr Eltringham, now aged 77, still travels abroad regularly. Recently, he has visited Myanmar, Mozambique, Indonesia, Vietnam, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Egypt to train anaesthetists and to lecture on safe anaesthesia at conferences.

When he’s not travelling the world. Dr Eltringham somehow finds time to give practice interviews to students from local schools seeking to read medicine at university.

This year he has been given the WFSA’s Distinguished Service Award.