It is with quiet humility that Dr Rondhir Jithoo talks about his OAM honour conferred this Australia Day.
“It’s not a recognition of an individual achievement,” he says simply. “It’s recognition of service to neurosurgery.”
That distinction matters deeply to a man whose career has been shaped not by accolades, but by collective effort, duty, and an unwavering belief that medicine exists within, not above, the community it serves.
With more than three decades in neurosurgery, the Melbourne-based Dr Jithoo’s work has spanned Australia’s major public hospitals as well as some of the most remote and underserved regions in the Pacific. From Indigenous communities in Australia to surgical outreach missions in Fiji and Papua New Guinea, his practice has been defined by access, equity, and service over prestige.
“In the old days, the surgeon was seen as the boss,” he reflects. “They took the credit when things went well. But surgery is a collective endeavour.”
Nurses, anaesthetists, allied health professionals, support staff, the people who rarely receive public recognition are, in his view, just as deserving of this honour.
That philosophy also explains his career-long commitment to public hospitals. Unlike many specialists, Dr Jithoo did not prioritise private practice. “This recognition,” he says, “also acknowledges that I chose to spend much of my career in the public system.”
Service, for him, extends beyond hospitals.
Later in life, in his mid-forties, Dr Jithoo joined the Australian Defence Force as a medical officer, a decision rooted as much in family history as personal values. His great-uncle served in the Indian Air Force during the Second World War and died on active service, buried in a pre-Partition war grave in Karachi. “Duty, teamwork, accountability, service before self,” he says, listing the military values that mirror those of surgery. “They are deeply aligned.”
He has since completed overseas deployment in the Middle East, providing medical care to those serving the nation.
The experience, while professionally rewarding, came with emotional costs. “When you deploy, your family waits at home – anxious,” he says. In that sense, the OAM feels less like a personal reward and more like recognition for those who stand quietly behind the service professional, their family, colleagues, community.
Dr Rondhir Jithoo OAM’s own story is shaped by a layered diaspora journey.
Born and raised in South Africa, he traces his ancestry to Lucknow and Bihar, with his great-grandparents migrating in the 1860s and 1870s as dairy farmers near Durban, a city deeply connected to Mahatma Gandhi’s early activism. His great-grandfather was involved with the Natal Indian Congress, adding a thread of civic engagement to the family legacy.
Medicine, too, runs deep. His father was a general practitioner, his mother an academic anthropologist. When Dr Jithoo migrated to Australia in 2002 as a qualified doctor, neurosurgical training followed, primarily in Melbourne. Today, that legacy continues through his children – daughter Arya who is a neuroscientist and a son Ved who is a doctor – though he is quick to say they followed their own paths, inspired perhaps by their grandfather as much as him.
Neurosurgery, he acknowledges, is not for the faint-hearted. Long hours, physically demanding operations, high-risk decisions and outcomes that can be devastating. “You don’t always get a good result,” he says quietly. “Patients can die.” It is this proximity to vulnerability and mortality that he believes demands not just technical skill, but character.
“Patients may never see your surgical skill,” he says. “That happens in the operating theatre. But they see your kindness, your compassion.” He recalls being taught that whether a patient is homeless or the Prime Minister, “once you open their head, the brain looks the same.”
One of the cases that has stayed with him occurred during a surgical outreach in Fiji. Faced with a child suffering from tuberculosis meningitis, with limited resources available, Dr Rondhir Jithoo OAM improvised using a low-cost shunt sourced from India. The operation saved the child’s life, a reminder that innovation in medicine is often born from necessity, not technology.
As he reflects on his career, one belief remains constant: “Service before self”, he says, is the foundation of medicine and perhaps what the Order of Australia ultimately recognises.
“This feat doesn’t change how I work,” he says. “I would still do the same thing. But if it strengthens trust for my community, then it has meaning.”
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