Latest news with #AnneMerriman
Irish Independent
06-07-2025
- Health
- Irish Independent
Obituary: Dr Anne Merriman, nun and UCD-trained doctor who transformed end-of-life care in Africa
When she arrived in Kenya in 1990, it was one of only three countries in Africa — along with Zimbabwe and South Africa — that had any palliative care with meaningful pain control. For most Kenyans, however, codeine was prohibitively expensive. Even patients with cancer were being sent away with paracetamol. Anne Merriman was anxious to introduce her cheap oral morphine, which she had developed in the 1980s in Singapore as founder of its first palliative care service. Her formula was, she said, 'as easy as making coffee, just four ingredients: morphine powder, a preservative, PH stabiliser and water'. It had proved transformative in giving a modicum of peace and dignity to patients for whom nothing more could be done, and who would otherwise have been discharged from hospital to die in agony in their own flats. In 1993, she founded Hospice Africa Uganda in Kampala — on the condition that the Ugandan health minister should also legalise powdered morphine and approve its importation. She went on to oversee the care of more than 40,000 patients in Uganda and the training of thousands of healthcare workers across Africa. Her model, of nurse-led teams visiting patients in their homes, became the blueprint for palliative care on the continent. In 2018, The Lancet reported that pain inequality was still 'a heinous injustice that has been largely ignored in global health… the 3.6 billion people residing in the poorest countries receive less than 1pc of the morphine distributed worldwide'. Merriman, on the other hand, took the view that 'you are not going to change the world, but if you change the life of one person you will change their world'. She told her mother: 'I'm going to Africa to care for the poorly children' Anne Merriman was born on May 13, 1935, to Irish parents in she was four, inspired by the church magazine Echo from Africa, she announced to her mother: 'I'm going to Africa to care for the poorly children.' Her medical calling was sharpened by the sudden death of her younger brother, Bernard, aged 11, of a brain tumour. 'There was no palliative care for him, and nothing to help us with bereavement afterwards,' she recalled. 'I remember feeling so sad on a bus full of people and thinking: they don't know what we've just been through.' She entered the Medical Missionaries of Mary in Drogheda, Co Louth, and in 1963 graduated in medicine from University College Dublin. She was posted to a hospital in Nigeria. Although the Nigerian hospital was well-equipped, she was shocked to discover that terminally-ill patients were simply sent home to fend for themselves. The same was true in Liverpool, where she returned nine years later — having left the order — to care for her own mother and run the geriatric unit at the Whiston Hospital. After her mother's death in 1981, she moved to Malaysia, then Singapore, before returning to Africa in 1990. She was appointed MBE in 2003, and published two memoirs. Dogged and focused, with a wicked sense of humour, she retained her Liverpudlian accent, but latterly favoured traditional African dress. She lived in Kampala in a house full of rescue cats and dogs, attended by three unmarried mothers and their children, whom she regarded as her family.
New York Times
01-07-2025
- Health
- New York Times
Anne Merriman, ‘Mother of Palliative Care' in Uganda, Dies at 90
Working as a doctor in Singapore in the 1980s, Anne Merriman saw firsthand the agony that poor, terminally ill patients suffered after being released from the hospital. Treatment for pain, she discovered, was a matter of economic privilege, much like access to health care. The cost of intravenous morphine was prohibitive for many of her patients. So she came up with an alterative: powdered morphine. At her behest, a pharmacist at the National University of Singapore, where Dr. Merriman taught, developed a formula with just three ingredients: morphine powder, water and a preservative. The cost was a fraction of that of intravenous morphine. And the simplicity of the formula meant that, unlike medical cocktails containing sedatives and alcohol, it could be quickly adjusted and mixed for each patient to take home. For Dr. Merriman, a former nun who would go on to expand palliative care in the developing world — introducing a replicable, culturally flexible model of hospice to Africa, treating nearly 40,000 patients and training some 10,000 medical professionals across 37 countries on the continent — that small innovation was, she later wrote, 'a game changer.' Dr. Merriman died on May 18 at her home in Kampala, Uganda. She was 90. The cause was respiratory failure, her cousin Chris Merriman said. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Irish Times
19-05-2025
- Health
- Irish Times
Dr Anne Merriman, pioneer of palliative care in Africa, dies aged 90
The death has taken place in Uganda of an Irish-educated doctor renowned for introducing palliative care to Africa. Dr Anne Merriman had celebrated her 90th birthday only last week, receiving tributes from President Michael D Higgins and Taoiseach Micheál Martin. Dr Merriman, who took her medical training in University College Dublin, established Hospice Africa Uganda in Kampala in 1993. Known as 'the mother of palliative care in Africa', she went on to establish the Institute of Hospice and Palliative Care in Africa alongside the hospice. The institute offers masters, bachelors and diploma programmes in palliative care, training hundreds of students from 37 African countries. Paying tribute to Dr Merriman after her death on Sunday, UCD School of Medicine noted how she also supported new initiatives in Tanzania, Nigeria, Cameroon, Sierra Leone, Malawi, Ethiopia, Zambia, Sudan and Rwanda. READ MORE In decades of missionary and medical work, Dr Merriman was credited with improving the lives of thousands of critically ill people. Her model of affordable, home-based palliative care, using oral morphine to manage pain, revolutionised end-of-life care in Uganda and Africa. Once a nominee for the Nobel peace prize, she was born in Liverpool to parents who were English-born children of Irish emigrants. After leaving school in Liverpool, she joined the Medical Missionaries of Mary (MMM) order in Dundalk to fulfil a dream held as a young girl to serve the poor in Africa. The order sent her to UCD to train in medicine, after which she worked for 10 years in Nigeria as a missionary doctor and for two decades in Uganda. She left the order after 20 years but maintained a strong faith and deep ties with the MMM sisters. She also worked in the UK, Malaysia, Singapore and Kenya, gaining extensive experience in tropical medicine and community health. [ Dr Anne Merriman's hospice brings dignity to the dying in Uganda Opens in new window ] She received the Presidential Distinguished Service Award from President Higgins in 2013. In a birthday greeting last week, Mr Higgins described her legacy as 'nothing short of inspirational'. 'You have awakened a continent, and the world, to the fact that pain relief and compassionate holistic care at the end of life is a fundamental human right. Your work has laid the foundations for the development of palliative care across Africa,' Mr Higgins said. 'It is incredible to think that when you established Hospice Africa Uganda in 1993 there were only three countries in Africa with palliative care. The fact that today 37 African countries have palliative care is testament to your work and your vision that there is palliative care for all in need in Africa.' Mr Martin also paid tribute to Dr Merriman on that occasion. 'Through your tireless efforts, you have brought dignity, comfort and peace to patients and their families, where once there was pain, fear, and suffering.' Ireland's Ambassador to Uganda, Kevin Colgan, said she was a 'treasured and active' member of the Irish community in Kampala until recent weeks. She was named UCD Alumnus of the Year in Health Sciences in 2016. She served as an honorary teaching fellow at Lancaster University and an honorary professor of palliative care at Makerere University, Kampala.
