{"id":30904,"date":"2025-07-01T21:19:21","date_gmt":"2025-07-01T21:19:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=30904"},"modified":"2025-07-01T21:23:23","modified_gmt":"2025-07-01T21:23:23","slug":"anne-merriman-mother-of-palliative-care-in-uganda-dies-at-90","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=30904","title":{"rendered":"Anne Merriman, \u2018Mother of Palliative Care\u2019 in Uganda, Dies at 90"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A medical doctor and former nun, she found an affordable way to expand palliative care in the developing world, bringing pain relief to poor, terminally ill patients.<\/p>\n

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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.<\/p>\n

The cost of intravenous morphine was prohibitive for many of her patients. So she came up with an alterative: powdered morphine.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

For Dr. Merriman, a former nun who would go on to expand palliative care in the developing world \u2014 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 \u2014 that small innovation was, she later wrote, \u201ca game changer.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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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.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Dr. Merriman in an undated photo. She expanded palliative care in the developing world by creating a replicable, culturally flexible model of hospice.<\/span>via Merriman family<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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A medical doctor and former nun, she found an affordable way to expand palliative care in the developing world, bringing pain relief to poor, terminally ill patients.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 \u2014 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 \u2014 that small innovation was, she later wrote, \u201ca game changer.\u201dDr. Merriman died on May 18 at her home in Kampala, Uganda. She was 90. The cause was respiratory failure, her cousin Chris Merriman said.Dr. Merriman in an undated photo. She expanded palliative care in the developing world by creating a replicable, culturally flexible model of hospice.via Merriman familyWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30906,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30904"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30904\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30907,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30904\/revisions\/30907"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/30906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}