New year honour for Pulham professor

Ann Barrett of Pulham Market, Emeritus Professor of Oncology at the University of East Anglia, former deputy dean of the school of medicine and lead clinician for oncology at the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital has been made an OBE for services to healthcare in the New Year honours list.

Ann Barrett of Pulham Market, Emeritus Professor of Oncology at the University of East Anglia, former deputy dean of the school of medicine and lead clinician for oncology at the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital has been made an OBE for services to healthcare in the New Year honours list.

While at the Royal Marsden Hospital in London, Prof Barrett produced the first technique for whole body irradiation as the earliest bone marrow transplants were carried out.

She worked closely with Dame Janet Husband and Dr Jane Dobbs on the use of CT scanning in cancer and radiotherapy treatment planning - at a time when those techniques were very new.

With Dr Dobbs she produced a textbook called Practical Radiotherapy Planning, a fourth edition of which was published in June this year.

Prof Barrett arrived in Norfolk in 1986, following a spell as chair of oncology at Glasgow's Beatson Oncology Centre, the second largest cancer centre in the UK.

She came to Norwich to set up the new medical school under the leadership of dean Professor Sam Leinster, helping develop of new curriculum for the students.

Prof Barrett has served on several government commissions and groups including most recently, the National Radiotherapy Advisory Group, which contributed to the Cancer Reform Strategy.

She was Registrar and then Vice President of the Royal College of Radiologists, president of the European Society for Therapeutic Radiation Oncology, an active member of the International Society of Paediatric Oncology and a trustee of the Big C cancer charity, with particular responsibility for the Big C Family Information and Support Centre.

She said: 'I have had a really good colleagues throughout my career who have been great to work with and very supportive. This might have come to me, but it reflects the excellent teams I have worked with.

'My time in Norfolk was the latter period of my career, but I have had a fantastic time here. Helping set up the medical school was enormously exciting.

'The things you remember are the people you work with and the patients you treat. I remember getting a bunch of flowers from the mother of somebody I had treated when they were three. The flowers were on the occasion of his 21st birthday, and that was a wonderful feeling.'