TOCUMWAL’S Morris Street Medical Centre is to be renamed after Dr Balaji Rao as part of a deal which will see the town gain the services of a new full-time general practitioner from Monday.
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Maher Alsabti said yesterday he had bought the practice from Dr Rao, who is under investigation by the NSW police homicide squad over the deaths of two elderly patients last month.
Dr Rao had been banned from practising privately and attending the Tocumwal hospital as a visiting medical officer due to the investigation.
Dr Alsabti said he had obtained a provider number to start in general practice from Monday and had received hospital visiting rights from Greater Southern Health.
He said the decision to rename the clinic the Rao Medical Centre was designed to honour his predecessor.
“He deserves everything and we all appreciate what he’s done over the past 35 years,” Dr Alsabti said.
“I need his name to be in town forever, so I made the decision to change the name from Monday.”
Dr Alsabti, who comes from Basra in southern Iraq and arrived in Australia in 2000, has been practising at Urana in recent years.
He said the move to Tocumwal with his pregnant wife and four children had been in the pipeline for some time.
“I approached Dr Rao in September last year, I had heard he was going to retire this year,” Dr Alsabti said.
He said the plan was to take over the practice in August but the deal had been brought forward following the police investigation.
Dr Alsabti said he would continue to provide consultations at Urana on Saturdays each fortnight.
Dr Rao said “it was nice of him to think about that,” when asked how he felt about the clinic’s name change.
Tocumwal stock agent Don Young, who organised a rally in support of Dr Rao last weekend, was happy the town would again have a doctor.
“We’ve got a doctor chosen by Balaji who has got his faith in him and so we’ve got faith in him,” he said.
