Hilary Scott was lead consultant at the time of the Rainbow Appeal, which raised £1 million to provide a new children's ward and specialist outpatients department at the Bury St Edmunds hospital.
She has clocked up 35 years of NHS service and last Tuesday a party was thrown by colleagues in her honour.
She began training at Guys Hospital, in London, in 1962, qualifying in 1967. She worked as a junior doctor at Guys, Winchester Hospital, Hampshire, Hillingdon Hospital, Uxbridge, Hammersmith and Great Ormond Street, in London.
In 1970, she spent time helping children in Nigeria at the end of the Biafra War as part of a Save The Children relief team.
She then went to Canada working in the Toronto Sick Children's Hospital and returned to Britain to take up a post as senior registrar in paediatrics at Addenbrooke's, in Cambridge. She joined West Suffolk in 1979.
Dr Scott said: "I have always loved working with children and I had made up my mind from quite early on that I wanted to go into paediatrics.
"I have loved working at West Suffolk Hospital, which is a friendly hospital, not too big, not too small. I always enjoyed great support from colleagues."