Sir Ray Avery on what really matters in life

Sir Ray Avery, 70. Photo / Doug Sherring

As told to Paul Little.

All my worlds collided in 2017 in terms of my aspirations for the LifePod Incubator and for my own family.

I had been in hospitals in Africa and Nepal and seen broken incubators pushed into corridors. The next most common sight was a dead baby. That had an effect on me, and I wanted to do something about it.

One of the things that had prevented me from marrying and having kids was thinking that if I was trying to fix problems for every kid in the world, I couldn't bring up a kid of my own.

But in 2017 I scored on both fronts: I knocked off the incubator and realised I have two beautiful young daughters — Amelia, who is 9, and Anastasia, who's 7 — with wonderful imaginations.

I'm cognisant I spend a lot of time away from the kids, on the road or working late at night. "I can't play with you now because I have to finish this." And, given my own unhappy childhood, I wanted them to have the best life they can.

So, I never say "no" to them — not in terms of buying stuff, but, if I see one walking past with a chainsaw I think: "I wonder where she's going with that?"

After seven years, the incubator is now in production in India. We've been trying to destroy them for the last few years, because I didn't want a Samsung moment, and I'm pretty confident they measure up.

We've made them serviceable. They are in three parts, so if something goes wrong you can detach that part, put it in a box and send it back. You don't need experts on site. They've been tested in hospitals in a soft launch, meet ISO standards and I'm proud of that because my organisation, Medicine Mondiale, is a small virtual organisation.

I also audit things with the girls. Once a month in an anecdotal way, I say, "Give me three adjectives to describe me as a person." The younger one would always say, when she was 4 or 5: "Clever, clever, clever". And when I asked her to describe her mother, she would say: "Lollipop, lollipop, lollipop," because that's how her mum made her feel.

But 2017 was important because I know, from that auditing process, that I've delivered. The girls love me and I love them and we care for each other. I wanted them to have a memory of what it's like to be loved by a parent — something I never experienced.

They might spend a quarter of their time fighting, but what I love about our family is that the rest of the time is spontaneous hugging between all the family. When the door opens and I come back from a trip, I'm enveloped in a sea of arms and legs.

That makes it full circle. It's the feeling I was looking for all my life and it's come back to me in a reverse way. All the things I wanted have come to me.

Knowing this love now makes it even harder to see a baby being taken away in a developing country. I have the next 10 years of my life to finish this job.

And if my kids, when they are in their 20s, can walk into a hospital and see a row of LifePods there, that's the best legacy I can give them.