BEVERLY HILLS, March 9, (THEWILL) – Queen Elizabeth II of Britain has conferred one of the highest national honours, Dame Commander of the Order of the British Emprire, on a British-born Nigerian nurse, health expert, lecturer and medical professor, Ms. Elizabeth Nneka Anionwu.
The conferment on Dame Anionwu of Irish and Nigerian descent was in recognition of her services to the nursing profession in the United Kingdom.
Anionwu was born Elizabeth Mary Furlong in Birmingham, United Kingdom, and is the child of then unmarried 20-year-old Irish woman, Mary Furlong, a brilliant student who obtained a scholarship to Cambridge University to study classics.
In her second year, she became pregnant for a Nigerian law student, Lawrence Odiatu Victor Anionwu, and decided to leave Cambridge and look for a job in order to provide for her daughter Elizabeth and herself.
Anionwu’s upbringing was heavily affected by moving between institutions and family. She spent just over two years living with her mother, a relationship that ended when her stepfather, who didn’t accept her and drank heavily, attacked her.
For much of her childhood, she was cared for by nuns, including several years in the Nazareth House convent in Birmingham and was often harshly punished and humiliated for wetting the bed.
After an unsettled childhood and estrangement from her father, Anionwu visited Nigeria and took on her father’s name whom she described as a career inspiration.
She began her nursing career at the age of 16 and started to work as a school nurse assistant in Wolverhampton after being inspired by a nun who cared for her eczema.
Anionwu contributed to opening the first sickle cell and thalassemia counselling centre in the UK. She also helped create the Mary Seacole Centre for Nursing Practice at the University of West London. She retired in 2007.
Later on, she continued with her education to become a nurse, health visitor and tutor. She is ultimately thankful that her father pushed her to pursue and progress more in her career.
She also travelled to the US to study counselling for sickle cell and Thalassemia centres, as those courses were not available in the UK. She has a PhD, a DBE and FRCN (Fellow Royal College of Nursing).
In 1979, she worked with Dr. Brozovic to create the first UK Sickle Cell and Thalassemia counselling centre in Brent which pioneered the opening of over 30 centres in the UK, using the Brent location as a basis.
Anionwu is a member and patron of multiple committees: Sickle Cell Society, Nigerian Nurses Charitable Association UK, Vice President of Unite/Community Practitioners and Health Visitors Association, Editorial Advisory Board of Nursing Standard, NHS Sickle Cell & Thalassemia Screening Programme Steering Group, Honorary Advisor to the Chief Nursing Officer’s Black & Minority Ethnic Advisory Group, and Life patron of The Mary Seacole Trust.
Even though she retired in 2007, Anionwu has remained active in the nursing community and overlooks many projects.
