Dr. Anne Merriman Biography
November 2008

Dr. Anne Merriman graduated from UCD Medical School in 1963 and is internationally recognised as one of the leading Hospice Movement pioneers in the world, and the undisputed leader of the Hospice Movement in Africa, a continent to which she has devoted close to a quarter century of her professional life. Anne was born and raised in Liverpool. She enrolled in the UCD Medical School in 1957, was a devoted Mater student and, after qualification in 1963, she did her internship in the International Missionary Training Hospital in Medicine in Drogheda. Then, over the first decade of her post-graduate career, she completed three two-year stints in three Medical Missionaries of Mary hospitals in South East Nigeria. This was interspersed with posts in Drogheda, Dublin and Edinburgh, during which she successfully took her MRCPI and MRCP Edinburgh as well as diplomas in Child Health and Tropical Medicine. She then returned to the UK for almost 10 years in order to look after her incapacitated mother and, during that time, remarkably, she was able to complete her training in Geriatric Medicine and was appointed as Consultant Physician and Clinical Lecturer at the University of Liverpool, and subsequently as Senior Lecturer in Geriatric Medicine and Honorary Consultant in the University of South Manchester. Then she moved back to be nearer to her mother in Merseyside where she became head of the Department of Geriatric Medicine at Whiston Hospital.

After the death of her beloved mother, Anne took a new direction - both career-wise and geographically – first by becoming Associate Professor to USM in Penang in Malaysia and then as Senior Teaching Fellow to the Department of Community, Occupational and Family Medicine in the National University of Singapore. It was during this seven-year period that she developed her interest in Palliative Medicine and the Hospice Movement. She became a Founder Member of the Hospice Care Association of Singapore and made major contributions to that discipline, not only in Singapore, but also in South East Asia generally.

Dr. Anne Merriman receives an Honorary Fellowship of UCD’s Medical School, in recognition of her lifetime's work.

In 1990, Anne was invited to be the first Medical Director of the Nairobi Hospice in Kenya, which opened in January 1990. During her time in that role, she realised the terrible suffering of terminally-ill patients in a country where oncology treatment was available only for the privileged few, and where patients tragically only presented at a late and often incurable stage of their disease. Dame Cecily Saunders, the legendary foundress of the International Hospice Movement, asked her to publish her views on palliative care in Africa. As a result, Dr. Merriman received numerous invitations from a variety of African countries requesting her to assist in setting up palliative care services along the lines of the model that her team had successfully pioneered in Kenya. This “Merriman Model” was the inspiration that was to drive the development of affordable and locally accessible services for the African subcontinent in the ensuing decade. In 1993, Hospice Africa Uganda was founded. Under Anne Merriman’s leadership, this introduced a model system of terminal care customised to developing countries with limited resources. She founded the Palliative Care Association of Uganda and was its founding Vice President. On a continent-wide basis, she became a founder member of the African Palliative Care Association.

Anne’s academic career and discipline saw to it that she has published extensively - over 90 articles and five books, as well as serving as editor and peer-reviewer on several journals. She still receives multiple speaking invitations to address learned associations and organisations all over the world. The driving motivation behind all of this for Anne Merriman is her passionate commitment to bringing affordable and culturally appropriative palliative care to all of Africa. In 2007, the School was delighted to confer on Dr. Anne Merriman its highest award - Honorary Fellowship of the School, in recognition of her lifetime’s work.