obituaries
Dr Anne Merriman
(b, 1935, Liverpool, q 1963, Dublin, d 18 May 2025, Kampala, Uganda)
Long-time CMF member, Dr Anne Merriman, a Liverpool-born humanitarian who died in May 2025 at the age of 90, dedicated her life to ensuring that people with life-limiting illnesses in Africa could die in dignity, free from unnecessary pain, and surrounded by compassion. Through her relentless advocacy and determination, she helped establish palliative care services in over thirty African countries, touching the lives of countless patients, families, and healthcare professionals.
Born on 13 May 1935, to Josephine and Thomas Merriman, Dr Merriman was the third of four children raised in a devout Catholic household. A sense of purpose emerged early. At the age of four, after seeing images of sick children in an African missionary magazine, she declared her desire to become a nurse and work in Africa. A decade later, a film about the Irish Medical Missionaries of Mary deepened her calling to combine caring for the ill with joining the order.
At 18, Dr Merriman entered the Medical Missionaries of Mary in Drogheda, County Louth. The congregation sent her to University College Dublin to study medicine, and she graduated in 1963. Her first postings as a young nun and missionary doctor in Nigeria exposed her to patients dying in agony, with little or no access to pain relief. That formative experience planted the seed for what would become her life’s mission: to bring palliative care and effective pain management to communities in Africa.
Although she left the religious order after two decades, Dr Merriman’s faith remained central to her life and work. Returning to the UK, she specialised in geriatrics, public health, and the then-emerging field of palliative medicine. Inspired by Dame Cicely Saunders, founder of the modern hospice movement, she became convinced that palliative care could be adapted to the realities of poorer countries.
In the early 1980s, she worked at Tan Tock Seng Hospital in Singapore, where she helped establish Singapore’s first palliative care service. There she developed a simple, affordable oral liquid morphine formula, which was to become central to the holistic model of palliative care she would bring to Africa.
By the early 1990s, Dr Merriman undertook feasibility studies to start palliative care services in several African countries. She chose Uganda, which was then emerging from years of conflict and confronting a devastating HIV/AIDS epidemic. In 1993, at the age of 57, she founded Hospice Africa Uganda (HAU) in Kampala with a small team and few resources but with an unshakeable conviction that palliative care should be available to all.
The challenges were formidable. Uganda’s healthcare system was overstretched, cancer treatment was minimal, and strong painkillers, such as morphine, were difficult to access. Using her formidable powers of persuasion, Dr Merriman successfully lobbied for the importation of morphine powder to produce oral liquid morphine. She also campaigned for nurses and clinical officers to prescribe morphine, a crucial step in a country where doctors were scarce.
Under her leadership, HAU expanded from its first clinic in Kampala to include Mobile Hospice Mbarara and Little Hospice Hoima. She established the Institute of Hospice and Palliative Care in Africa, which has trained thousands in palliative care to diploma, bachelor’s, and master’s levels. When Dr Merriman began her work, only three African countries offered palliative care services. Today, thanks in large part to her advocacy and mentorship, that number has risen to 37.
Her approach integrated medical treatment with psychosocial and spiritual support, ensuring that all the needs of patients and their families were met. Since its establishment, HAU has cared for more than 40,000 patients and their families in Uganda.
Her contributions were recognised internationally. She received Membership of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE) in 2003 for her services to healthcare in Uganda, and the Presidential Distinguished Service Award from Irish President Michael D Higgins in 2013. A week after her death, she was posthumously awarded the National Independence Diamond Jubilee Medal by His Excellency, the President of Uganda, for her service to the country.
She authored numerous academic papers on pain management and two memoirs, Audacity to Love (2010) and That’s How the Light Got In (2023), chronicling her personal journey and the evolution of palliative care in Africa.
Dr Anne had an enormous capacity to love and was fondly known as ‘Jajja’, Luganda for grandmother. She combined fierce determination with warmth, humour, and a gift for mentorship. Her Tuesday night dinners at her Kampala home became legendary, drawing volunteers, medics, students, religious leaders, and friends for evenings of laughter, spirited debate, and storytelling.
Even in her final year, Dr Merriman remained active and inspiring. Just weeks before her death, she delivered an online lecture to Harvard Medical School’s Department of Global Health and Social Medicine. On her ninetieth birthday, celebrated at her home in Kampala five days before her death, she offered what would be her final public words, reminding guests, ‘Compassion is such an important thing…not only in work, but also with each other’.
Dr Merriman is deeply mourned by the global Hospice Africa community, by colleagues and friends across continents, and by the many patients and families whose suffering she helped to ease. She was predeceased by her parents and siblings and is survived by her nieces and cousins, including Chris Merriman, chair of Hospice Africa UK.
Chris Merriman
John Martin
(b 23 August 1950, Sydney, Australia, d 20 June 2025, Salisbury, England)
I first met John in October 2005 when CMF wanted to respond to the devastating earthquake in Kashmir. John was working downstairs from us at Partnership House in Waterloo Road with the Church Mission Society (CMS). Alongside a colleague, he was able to gather a wealth of data about the situation on the ground. He was invaluable in putting together an appeal to CMF members, which raised over £100,000 to help two mission hospitals in the region respond to the disaster.
This was John – kind, helpful, knowledgeable, intelligent, well-connected, and clued in to the world around him. We worked together on the Triple Helix Editorial Committee for the next decade before he became CMF’s third Head of Communications and my immediate predecessor. I learnt the ropes of being an editor from John – not so much the minutiae of copyediting and proofreading, but rather the broader skills needed to pull together a magazine from scratch.
John was born in Sydney in 1950, grew up on the family farm in Bogan Gate in New South Wales, and was educated at St Andrew’s Cathedral School in Sydney in the sixties. It was there that he came to faith in Christ and began a career in communications and publications, leading him in the late 1970s to work for the Anglican Consultative Committee in London.
In 1988, he became the editor of the Church of England Newspaper and is credited with transforming it into a professional publication.
He remained active in the evangelical wing of the Church of England and global Anglican circles for many years, helping to establish Fulcrum, serving as the Head of Communications for the National Evangelical Anglican Congress of 2003, and managing communications with CMS. He also collaborated with Cindy Kent and others in the early years of Premier Christian Radio. His final professional role was as Head of Communications at CMF, a position he held from 2013 to 2018. During that time, he and I collaborated again, this time combining social media, online publications, and traditional print.
Talking with others who have worked with John, there was a consensus that he was brilliant at being open to the leading of the Holy Spirit as he put together a publication. He would suddenly change direction and redo major articles or the order of items because it seemed that was the right way to go. He was seldom wrong but frequently drove his colleagues spare in the process!
John moved with his wife of 34 years, Deidre, to Salisbury a couple of years ago as his health deteriorated, and they became part of the worshipping community at the Cathedral. Deidre commented that it was fitting that his spiritual life began and ended as part of an Anglican Cathedral community.
Steve Fouch, CMF Head of Communications
Marjory Foyle
(b 1921, Dorset, q 1945, Exeter/Royal Free, 1969, Dundee, & 1999, London, d 2025 Hertfordshire)
To say Marjory Foyle led a remarkable life would be trite beyond words. In her own estimation, she was someone who had stumbled and fallen many times, but God had always picked her up and set her on a fresh path. She overflowed with gratitude to the God who had saved her. This humble, faithful nature was the first thing that struck me when I met the small, quiet, elderly woman who visited CMF’s offices 19 years ago, when we published her autobiography, Can it be Me?
Born into a Methodist preacher’s family, young Marjory had to deal with the breakup of her parents’ marriage and a congenital stammer, which followed her throughout her life. Against all odds and expectations, she went to medical school, initially in St Andrews, but was relocated to Exeter due to the war. It was during this time that she came to a saving faith in Jesus Christ.
Qualifying as the war finished, she knew her calling was to serve the Lord in mission, and she went on to serve for nearly thirty years in India at Lucknow and in Nepal at Tansen. It was during her second stint at Lucknow hospital that the pressures of running an overstretched and understaffed mission hospital led her to a physical and mental collapse, and she was diagnosed with depression. The slow recovery led her to realise she wanted to help others similarly struggling with mental health and went on to train in psychiatry in Dundee under Dr Monty Barker.
Returning to India, she began working at the Nur Manzil Psychiatry Centre – initially as a psychiatrist – but within a short period, she took over as Clinical Director, a role she served in for about a decade before retiring in 1981. However, that was not the end of her career, as Marjory was in high demand around the world as a speaker on mental health, and increasingly, on the mental health of mission staff.
With her battered ‘Biblical Suitcase’, she spent the next 25 years travelling around the world. She went on to help with the foundation of Member Care, a ministry of World Evangelical Alliance, and to write the seminal book on the mental wellbeing and care of missionaries, Honourably Wounded. With Dr Dominic Beer, she published an academic paper on Expatriate Mental Health, which she expanded into an MD that she received at the age of 78! She was also working with Dr Ted Lankester at InterHealth during much of this time, helping with the mental healthcare of the mission and aid workers they supported.
Marjory finally retired in her nineties to a residential home in Hertfordshire, where she celebrated her century in 2021. She went home to be with the Lord at the age of 103 earlier in 2025. Her legacy is huge, but also one that speaks of a God who works through our weakness to show his grace and power.
Steve Fouch, CMF Head of Communications
Dr Shina Grant
(b 1940, Fort William, q 1967, Aberdeen, d 2025, Inverness)
Dr Shina, as she was known to many West Highland folk, has passed away following a short illness. Her life and long career in general medical practice are best described as being a devoted service to others, shaped by her Christian faith and inner strength, and which positively impacted the communities she loved in rural Northwest Scotland.
Shina was born near Fort William in the shadow of Ben Nevis. Schooling was followed by a decision to study medicine at the University of Aberdeen. Although she found the preclinical years challenging, she found her feet in the clinical undergraduate years. Her empathy and diligence were evident once the trauma of anatomical dissection and the smell of formaldehyde were left behind!
She was actively involved in the Free Church of Scotland in Aberdeen and in the wider Christian student community, making lifelong friends there. Reserved and unassuming, she was adept at putting others at ease, allowing them to confide in her. She knew instinctively how to handle people – skills that would stay with her for the rest of her life. Shina graduated in 1967, the first member of her family to do so, creating a path to further education for future generations to follow.
Following her first postgraduate year in Aberdeen’s hospitals, Shina completed GP training in a medical practice in Crieff, Perthshire, before deciding in 1970 to join her brother in Canada, moving to Orillia, a rural farming town north of Toronto. She worked with a GP who was also an MP in the Canadian Parliament. Rural practice suited Shina. Contact with patients in their daily lives, either in the surgery or on house calls, was where she excelled. It was here that she formed lifelong friendships with one of the practice receptionists and her family, sharing a common Christian faith over many decades.
After a year, Shina returned to Scotland, initially as a locum GP before becoming the single-handed GP in Kinlochleven. With a non-existent off-duty rota, she was perpetually on call, both for her patients and the employees at the British Aluminium smelting factory in the village. Shina met her first husband, James, while working there, and they were married in 1977. They had two daughters, and Shina combined motherhood with local locum GP work, schools, and other roles. Over the next few years, Shina gave up working at the Kinlochleven practice and instead opted for locum GP work and other part-time medical roles.
Then James’ health changed, and in 1989, the family moved to Arisaig following Shina’s appointment to the single-handed practice there. The geographical area of the practice is a popular tourist destination, and the population could easily double in the summer months.
She coped admirably with single-handed medical practice, caring for James at home until he died in 1996, and raising their girls. Colleagues from this time have since remarked that ‘what would Shina do?’ was a frequent reflection they used when faced with difficult dilemmas later in their own careers, such was the influence she had on them.
Cross cover with the neighbouring practice in Mallaig gave the added excitement of potential RNLI lifeboat trips to the otherwise inaccessible peninsula community in Knoydart. This would be a thrill for some, but Shina’s sea legs were notoriously absent, making these trips a particular challenge. Her stoic nature and resilience resulting from her Christian faith carried her through these busy, challenging years. She often balanced personal and professional relationships with patients through the trading of baking recipes. Shina had the pleasure of seeing a new general practice premises opened in Arisaig shortly before retiring in 2006. Soon after retirement, she hugely enjoyed a medical volunteering expedition with the Vine Trust on board Amazon Hope in Peru.
In 2007, Shina married Murdo Grant, a longstanding acquaintance, and moved to Inverness. They travelled widely over the following years, spending lots of time with family and friends. Murdo’s sudden death in March 2025 was a loss that Shina felt keenly, as they had enjoyed many years together in later life, bringing them both great happiness following the loss of their first spouses.
Shina was a committed member of CMF and regularly attended Scottish conferences and local activities in Inverness. She had a longstanding interest in world Christian mission as an active member of Ness Bank Church in Inverness. She is greatly missed by her two daughters, their families, and friends near and far.
Eilidh Young
