Dame Elizabeth Nneka Anionwu CBE OM DBE FRCM, Honorary Doctor of Science, November 2022

Dame Elizabeth Nneka Anionwu CBE OM DBE FRCM has been awarded Honorary Doctor of Science at the LSBU graduation ceremony in November 2022.
One of the UK’s most distinguished nurses, Dame Elizabeth Anionwu has revolutionised the counselling of sickle cell disease and thalassaemia in the UK, and dedicating her career to tackling health inequalities.
Following a childhood spent in and out of children’s homes, Elizabeth qualified as a nurse and health visitor. It was while working in the community in west London that she realised children from black and minority ethnic backgrounds were suffering with inherited diseases such as sickle cell and thalassaemia - and that the needs of affected families were largely ignored by the medical establishment.
Determined to learn more, she travelled to America where understanding of sickle cell was far more advanced. She used the knowledge she gained there to help set up the UK’s first nurse-led Sickle & Thalassaemia Screening and Counselling Centre in Brent, back in 1979. Today there are 30 such centres, and awareness of these diseases is significantly greater, thanks largely to Elizabeth’s work as a practitioner and an academic.
In 2001, she established her own nursing research centre at the University of West London, naming it after Mary Seacole, the pioneering British-Jamaican Crimean War nurse. Elizabeth went on to play a major role in the campaign to put up a statue of Mary, which now stands in the garden of St Thomas’ Hospital.
As well as her Damehood, Elizabeth has a CBE along with a whole host of other honours including the 2019 Pride of Britain Lifetime Achievement Award and a place on the BBC’s 100 Women of the Year list in 2020, the same year she appeared on Desert Island Discs. She is a Fellow of the Royal College of Nursing, and patron of the Sickle Cell Society.

[@anuoluwapopriestley-adesub3969]

Beautiful! Truly, age is of the mind.
Noiseless Breakthroughs!!Keep soaring. Congratulations Ma.

[@mahabubshapan7443]

Thank you mam

[@chevellehymans6150]

Hello queen

[@chevellehymans6150]

Hello queen