PROFILE

Leading Advocate for African Nutrition, and a friend of Africa!

Ann Burgess went to the Sudan when she was three years old and since then Africa has been her second, and for many years her first, home. She graduated as one of the first students with a BSc (Nutrition) at Queen Elizabeth College (now Kings College), London University and then spent an unhappy year feeding rats at Glaxo Laboratories. In 1958 Ann went to the Medical Research Council's Infantile Malnutrition Research Unit (IMRU) attached to Mulago Hospital in Kampala under Dr R.F.A. Dean. Her job was to help develop a groundnut-based diet for treating kwashiorkor (at that time IMRU did not deal with marasmus). Later, when free dried skimmed milk became widely available, Ann and her husband, Leslie, worked with the Government Nutrition Unit to prepare a therapeutic diet containing milk, sugar and oil. This was similar to the diet now known as F-100. The formula was packed in small amounts and sent to health units around Uganda.

About this time IMRU started to investigate the dietary, economic and social causes of malnutrition. Ann, Leslie and a community leader took discharged children and their mothers to their homes in rural Buganda and learned much about their living conditions. After starting a family Ann worked part-time for Professor D.B. Jelliffe as a very inept 'Pediatric Mass Media Officer'. She also helped to set up the now well-known 'Mwanamigimu' Nutrition Rehabilitation Unit.

When Leslie joined the World Health Organisation in Dar-es-Salaam, Ann helped the Government Nutrition Unit under Dr T.N. Malentlema to analyse survey data and prepare teaching materials. She was also connected with the nutrition rehabilitation unit at Muhimbili Hospital. Later in Blantyre, Ann worked with the Ministry of Health collecting and analysing data on child malnutrition in different parts of Malawi. and preparing nutrition education materials.

Ann gained her Master of Public Health at the University of the Philippines in 1976 and became a Lecturer and then Senior Lecturer in nutrition at the Institute of Public Health. Field work with students in a Manila shanty town gave her an insight into the nutritional problems of urban households.

In 1972 the Burgess family moved to Rome and, since then, Ann has been a freelance nutrition consultant. She has worked with many UN and bilateral agencies mainly helping to develop teaching and education materials in various parts of Africa. She has edited numerous publications and helped to prepare teaching slides for Teaching-aids At Low Cost (TALC) and other agencies (included some for UNICEF with Ruth Oniang'o). Ann has written or contributed to many books including 'Nutrition for developing countries' (co-authored with Felicity Savage), 'How to grow a balanced diet' (co-authored with Grace Maina), 'Community nutrition for eastern Africa' (helped by many colleagues) and 'Caring for severely malnourished children' (co-authored with Ann Ashworth).