On the sixth anniversary of his death, friends, family and patients remember Dr. John Lalremsiama Sailo Ryntathiang as more than the founder of Bethany Hospital in Shillong: he was a physician who cared for people and places with equal attention. Dr. Sailo, who died on the morning of 15 April 2020 at 2:45 AM after falling ill with COVID-19, built a medical institution and a quiet legacy of service that continues to touch lives across Meghalaya and Ri-Bhoi.
Born into a family of firsts, Dr. Sailo carried a lineage of pioneers. His father, Captain Lalrinthanga Sailo, was the first Mizo graduate of the Indian Military Academy and served on the frontier of NEFA (now Arunachal Pradesh). His maternal grandfather, Dr. Lukira, was the first Mizo doctor, and his mother, Kong Dicky Sailo Ryntathiang, was a noted educationist and social worker in Shillong. Those closest to him say he rarely spoke of this heritage; he simply lived it.
A distinguished medical scholar, he graduated from Assam Medical College, Dibrugarh, completed postgraduate studies at AIIMS New Delhi with a Gold Medal, and became a Fellow of the American College of Chest Physicians (FCCP). But colleagues insist his credentials were only the surface. He was driven by a restless curiosity-about medicine, music, design, farming and architecture-and by a practical question he brought to both blueprints and case files: “How can this be better?”
That impulse shaped Bethany Hospital. What began as a modest clinic on Nongrim Hills Road in 1992 grew into a 175-bed multi-specialty hospital by 2011. Dr. Sailo funded students, represented Meghalaya in the Indian Medical Council, and attended conferences to learn rather than to be seen. He also built an outreach facility in Nongpoh, Ri-Bhoi, motivated by personal ties to the people and roads of the valley.
At home, he was as likely to reach for a guitar as for a stethoscope. Music, sketching and farming were not hobbies but practices through which he stayed human and attentive. His farmhouse in Nongpoh was his sanctuary; farming there was a form of respect for the land that resonated with Khasi notions of Ka Hok-righteous living as alignment with something larger than oneself.
Quiet in faith and manner, he made decisions that reflected his beliefs: returning to Shillong when a Delhi career was possible, building clinics where economics made little sense, and quietly paying for students’ education. What he left behind is diffuse but real-in the patients whose lives changed, the nurses and students who adopted his standards, and the communities still served by Bethany. Six years on, those who knew him still describe him simply as a good, thorough and warm man. This tribute is by his nephew, Maitphang Syiem.
Original Source: https://theshillongtimes.com/2026/04/16/a-life-composed-in-chords-soil-and-care-the-legacy-of-dr-j-l-sailo-ryntathiang/
Category: SPECIAL ARTICLE
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Publish Date: 2026-04-16 03:42:00
