Jenny Barnes writes:
ANNE BAYLEY was a remarkable surgeon, a dedicated scientist, a campaigner devoted to serving the needs of populations ravaged by AIDS, an inspiring priest, and a loving friend and family member.
From an early age she wanted to be a priest, but it was not then an option for women; so she chose medicine. She graduated from Girton, Cambridge, and the Middlesex Hospital Medical School, qualifying as a doctor in 1958.
After posts in England and Zambia, she was awarded her surgical fellowship in 1968. She went back to Africa, as a lecturer, and professor, in Ghana and Zambia. She specialised in surgical oncology. In the mid-1980s, she began to observe cases of atypical, aggressive Kaposi’s sarcoma, which presented differently from the described endemic form. She made the link between these cases and the immunodeficiency associated with HIV and AIDS, the Slim Disease as it was called in East Africa. At that time, AIDS was thought to be transmitted only by men to men or through blood transfusions, as seemed to be the case in gay communities in the Western countries. In the mid-1980s, alerted by Anne’s clinical reports, the US Center for Disease Control sent a team to work in Lusaka. This collaboration resulted in the recognition that there was a heterosexual transmission of HIV. She produced several significant papers on the discovery, some jointly with her colleagues. She was appointed OBE in 1985 for her contribution to the understanding of the way in which AIDS was spread.
In 1986, she was awarded an honorary fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh in recognition of her work in initiating surgical training in Zambia, besides being a leading authority on Karposi’s sarcoma and the surgical pathology of HIV.
After the General Synod voted in favour of women priests in 1992, Anne returned to England, and was among those ordained priest in 1994. She served in Wembley and Yorkshire, before moving to Herefordshire in 2005. She continued to visit Africa, conducting workshops and attending meetings focusing on health and wellbeing.
Her research papers are meticulous, detailed, and impersonal. In contrast, in a later book, One New Humanity (SPCK 1996), she describes the emotional shock of realising the implications of her discoveries: the recognition that homosexuality was not a factor, the exceptional curve in the graph describing the rising number of infections, and the sheer magnitude of the coming epidemic. She also realised the heavy impact that this discovery would have on the general population: the dangers of widespread infection, its impact on sexual relations, on marriage, on the children left orphaned after both parents had died, the massive load on hospitals, and increasing levels of poverty.
Two initiatives followed. First, she worked with churches in Zambia and Malawi to develop courses for married couples, aimed at providing information and guidance on sex within marriage. Second, the spread of AIDS in many countries in Africa resulted in increasing levels of poverty, as land became neglected and there were fewer people with the strength to cultivate it. She began to work with a permaculture specialist, Mugove Nyika, to promote a radical and practical way of food-growing so that those weakened by HIV could become self-sufficient in food.
She supported the diocese of Hereford in promoting permaculture in its twinned dioceses in Tanzania.
As a priest in the Bartestree Cross Group of Churches, she was loving, imaginative, stimulating, supportive, rigorous, cheerful, and, at times, unorthodox. She was completely unafraid. She never failed in her care of others. She was able to take pleasure in her family near by: her Ghanaian daughter, Faustina, and son-in-law Peter, and her three grandchildren, and her brother’s and sister’s families in Buckinghamshire.
After her retirement to the College of St Barnabas, she continued to offer support to those around her until her own weakness prevented her from doing more.
The Revd Professor Anne Bayley died on New Year’s Eve 2024, aged 90.
