The “father of trauma insurance”, Marius Barnard, has died in South Africa aged 87. He had been suffering prostate cancer for the past 17 years.

Dr Barnard was part of the team, led by his brother Christiaan, that undertook the world’s first heart transplant in 1967.

When he saw the financial hardship his patients suffered as they recovered from operations, he designed an insurance product that would pay for critical illnesses not covered by traditional life policies.

After several unsuccessful approaches to South African insurers, in 1983 Crusader Life agreed to offer “dread disease cover”. Dr Barnard joined the insurer as its medical consultant and later became a board member.

Trauma cover has since been taken up globally, and Dr Barnard has worked with advisers in many countries to help them sell it. He also developed children’s critical illness insurance with British insurer Pegasus, a subsidiary of Crusader.

In 1991 Dr Barnard was invited to talk at a UK life insurance conference, where he started a working relationship with Scottish Widows to develop its critical illness policy.

He remained as a technical consultant for a number of years.

Dr Barnard began his medical career in Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, as a general physician.

In 1966 he joined the Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery in Cape Town, South Africa, where the first heart transplant was performed.

As a member of the South African Parliament in 1980, Dr Barnard opposed apartheid and called for the release of Nelson Mandela.

He was honoured by the governments of France, Greece, Italy and Romania for contributions to medicine and humanity. Dr Barnard was also given numerous honorary memberships of medical associations and awards from global insurance associations.