Elizabeth Anionwu
- Hayeon Kwak
- Sep 25, 2023
- 3 min read
"Hold on to that dream and surround yourself with individuals who care for you, but will also speak the truth to you, and have the humility and confidence to listen." - Elizabeth Anionwu
DOB: 1947
Nationality: British
In 1947, Elizabeth Nneka Anionwu was born to a white woman, Mary Furlong, and an estranged Nigerian father, Lawrence Odaitu Anionwu, in the UK.
She was placed in a children’s home until she was nine years old, where she was bullied for her dark skin and unfamiliar hair texture. Amidst all this, Anionwu found comfort and inspiration in the nurse who would come and treat her eczema with patience and distract her from pain. It was then that she realised she would rather be a nurse than a nun.
When she was 17 years old, Anionwu excitedly applied to several teaching schools in London to train as a nurse. After receiving rejection after rejection despite her exceptional grades, Anionwu was finally accepted at Paddington General Hospital. Anwionwu believes her race and background played a deciding role in how her applications were received.
Ever since then, she has fought to undo institutionalized racism. While facing discrimination in the National Health Service (NHS), she was also confused about her own identity. She had dark skin but was raised in a white covenant with white grandparents with white names. After months of back and forth in her mind between staying oblivious or reaching out to her father, she was finally at his doorstep in June 1972.
Ever since their first meeting, when he gave her “the most enormous hug,” to his death only eight years later, he embraced her with open arms. He introduced her proudly to his family in Nigeria, and the two corresponded constantly, exchanging books and letters. Elizabeth’s relationship with her father strengthened her sense of identity, and she changed her legal name to include her father’s surname.
Through her father’s family, she was introduced to a cousin with sickle cell anaemia, a condition that made the patient more susceptible to infections and pain when the blood vessels are blocked. The condition at the time was very little known in Britain, and Anionwu was helpless even with her nursing degree. She researched and listened to experts, including consultant haematologist Misha Brozovic on sickle cell anaemia.
The other people Anionqu encountered in the NHS were indifferent about sickle cell anaemia because it mainly affected people of African or Caribbean heritage. So when Brozovic and Anionwu saw each other’s drive, they were naturally drawn to work together. The two worked to spread awareness of sickle cell anaemia and opened the Brent Sickle Cell and Thalassemia Information, Screening, and Counseling Center in 1979 which would go on to serve as a model for the following centres.
Sickle cell anaemia had been swept under the rug until that point, and Anionwu was “the first and only sickle cell nurse specialist” in Britain for six years. “Oh well, it only affects minorities,” was the decades of ignorance not only in sickle cell anaemia but in healthcare in general that Anionwu fought against.
In 1998, Anionwu introduced the Mary Seacole Centre to the public, hoping to challenge the “predominantly white, eurocentric focus of nursing recruitment, education and research” by aiding nurses from ethnic backgrounds in their career and offering educational resources for student nurses to learn about sickle cell anaemia. Even after giving birth to her daughter as a single mother in 1981 and her retirement in 2007, Anionwu has continued to challenge inequalities in the healthcare system. She recently spoke out, calling for more protection for frontline healthcare workers during the Covid pandemic.
Elizabeth Anionwu has received recognition for her work over the years, including most notably honorary doctorates from St Andrews and Birmingham City universities, a CBE, and a damehood for services to nursing.
Written by Hayeon Kwak
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