Doctor and campaigner

Born: 25 April 1939;

Died: 3 May 2017

DR ANNE Walker, who has died aged 78, was a doctor and sexual health specialist who worked in Glasgow and overseas. She was highly influential in raising awareness of sexual health in Australia during the 1970s and 80s. A vibrant, humorous and compassionate character, she devoted her skills to helping the disadvantaged, including years spent working as a GP in the Gorbals in the 1960s.

In later life, she was a volunteer guide at Glasgow Cathedral, reflecting her love of architecture and history, and was actively involved in many charitable causes.

Anne Muriel Zuill Walker was born in Edinburgh to radiologist Dr James Zuill Walker (later director of radiodiagnostics at Glasgow Royal Infirmary) and Muriel Stephen, who taught elocution and drama. Anne was the eldest of four and spent her childhood in Lincolnshire during the war and then Bearsden. She was a keen horse rider, a sailor and a fan of classical music.

The Walker home in Bearsden was open and welcoming, and the children were raised with a strong sense of social responsibility.

After primary school near Scunthorpe, she attended Laurel Bank School for Girls from 1947 to 1957 where her favourite subjects included English, history and music. She also participated enthusiastically in the school’s community projects, including visits to the war wounded at Erskine Hospital. Her school friends remember her as a warm, loving girl who had a knack for helping to resolve playground disputes amicably.

She studied medicine at Glasgow University, graduating in 1963 followed by 18 months of residencies and a spell in London when she gained a diploma in obstetrics. Her interest in women’s health also led her a few years later to gain a Certificate from Glasgow’s Family Planning Association. She qualified as a GP in Bearsden, but quickly decided that her skills were needed more in the Gorbals. She was deeply impressed by the spirit of those she worked among, noting the strong family links and the support local people gave to one another.

Dr Walker was deeply affected by the death of her beloved father from prostate cancer in 1968, and in 1970, feeling in need of a complete change, she went to Australia. There, she devoted herself to working in the neglected specialism of sexual health. She rose to become the senior medical officer-in-charge at Sydney Sexually Transmitted Diseases Clinic. She also lectured to doctors, nurses and social workers, and discussed sexual health on the media.

In the pre-AIDS era, syphilis rates were high, mainly among Australian gay men, and Cambodian and Vietnamese refugees. The male clinic was housed in a Nissen hut with a tin roof that was punishingly hot in the summer, a measure of how underfunded sexual health services were. In 2006, she was recognised by Sydney University with an award for her “outstanding work in the field of sexually transmitted diseases in Sydney and Glasgow” and in particular, her dedication to working with those from disadvantaged backgrounds

In 1975, Dr Walker was awarded a scholarship to visit 12 cities in Europe, Asia and the USA to study sexual health provision, during which time she obtained a diploma in venereology in London. Her interests included systems for tracing contacts of patients with confirmed sexually transmitted infections (STIs). Her sister Gillian, then on a posting to Saigon with the UN, was able to assist her and the stop in Saigon was also important because Dr Walker knew diseases were being spread by military personnel from Vietnam on leave in Australia.

Dr Walker returned to Glasgow in the mid 1980s, where she continued working in the field, becoming a part time clinical assistant at the Sandyford Initiative at Glasgow Royal Infirmary from 1988 until her retirement in 2003. She also became involved in community projects in Easterhouse. She had a flat on Royal Terrace that she dubbed the “pure dead brilliant flat”; in it, her music was always playing, and her family and many friends were frequent visitors.

She loved St Mungo’s Cathedral and knew the history of every corner. She was a committee member of the Society of Friends of Glasgow Cathedral and appointed convenor of all the guides. Her love of architecture and history also led her to join the Alexander Thomson Society, of which she was an active member. She particularly loved the Central Hotel in Glasgow, which caught her imagination during trips there as a child because Roy Rogers and Trigger had visited and the first long distance television pictures had been received there, on May 24, 1927.

But it was always people that concerned her the most, particularly the vulnerable. She was known occasionally to hug distraught patients.

A poem written about her by a close friend and read at her funeral captured this as “the compassion and the caring, which oftentimes you almost drowned in”.

As a child, she would peer over the wall into Duke Street prison from the tram, and try to imagine life as a prisoner. That fellow feeling never left her and in Australia, she became active in penal reform and supporting the children of prisoners.

She was also convener of the Blue Triangle Housing Association’s Hostel for Homeless Youth in Glasgow, and in 2003 she set up and endowed the Zuill Charitable Trust to “help reduce poverty and deprivation” within the city of Glasgow and its environs.

Dr Walker did not marry or have children but had many friends, was a devoted sister and relished being an aunt to her many nephews and nieces, acting in loco parentis to Lucy and Shona when they visited from boarding school while their parents were overseas. She loved her dogs, Katya and Natasha.

Dr Walker spent her later years at Whitecraigs Care Home, where in spite of her deteriorating health, she continued to enjoy her classical music.

She is survived by her sisters, Gillian and Carol, her brother Richard, seven nieces and nephews, 11 great nieces and nephews, an her many god-children.

REBECCA MCQUILLAN