Grantee awarded OBE for services to Palliative Care in Sierra Leone.
Dr Mary Bunn was awarded an OBE in the King’s Birthday Honours 2025 for services to the Development of Palliative Care in Sierra Leone. This followed 2 small grants from the Sir Halley Stewart Trust in 2020 and 2024 to establish a training programme for healthcare professionals working in palliative care in the country. Mary is a Palliative Care Doctor in Sierra Leone and a Trustee of Hospice Africa UK.
The opportunity to develop a palliative care service in Sierra Leone arose in 2017. Mary spent a year working at a small private hospice before moving to the government teaching hospitals complex in Freetown, recognising the need for a nationwide, integrated service in the government sector.
She applied for a small grant from SHST in 2020 to develop a training and implementation program to equip healthcare professionals from 5 district hospitals to provide basic palliative care in their own settings. A second small grant in 2024 enabled the development of a National Palliative Care Training team, who delivered training in 2 further districts and 3 hospitals in Freetown.
These grants, alongside procurement of morphine powder for local production, developing the clinical unit and advocacy have resulted in the establishment of a nationally run palliative care service, offering ongoing training, support and advice to healthcare workers across the country of Sierra Leone.
Mary worked as a General Practitioner in the UK until 2005 when she went to run a children’s palliative care unit in Blantyre, Malawi. She achieved an MPhil in Palliative Medicine from the University of Cape Town in 2009, conducting research into barriers to communication which informed a booklet for healthcare professionals entitled ‘No secrets; helping families and carers talk to children about life-limiting illness’. She returned to UK to work as a specialist palliative care doctor at Queenscourt Hospice in Southport for 9 years, obtaining a PGCE in teaching and learning in clinical practice from Edge Hill University and teaching medical students and health professionals.