Born: 
10/05/1931
Died: 
10/11/2020
Specialty: 
Paediatrics/Community Child Health
Designatory Letters: 
MB Edin 1956, DCH Glasg 1960, DObstRCOG Lond 1962, MRCP Edin 1967 Child Life

Former Consultant Paediatrician at Bedford Hospital, Dr Paul M Barnes died peacefully at home surrounded by his loving family on 10 November 2020.

Immediately after National Service in Cyprus, he married Alice, whom he had met at the British Military Hospital in Dhekelia. Unwilling to tolerate the climate of Scotland, she shaped his future career by insisting on a warmer climate and they went to U.C.H. Ibadan, Nigeria where he became registrar to Professor Ralph Hendrickse and developed a lifelong interest in sickle cell anaemia, producing several papers together.

Paul was the last Great Ormond Street Senior Registrar to be seconded to Uganda, and wound up the sixteen-year-old scheme a year after surviving the coup of Idi Amin. On his return to G.O.S., together with his Chief Dr E.J. Moynhan, they showed that the clinical features of acrodermatitis enteropthica were the result of zinc deficiency, thus reviving an interest in zinc metabolism.

After his appointment as the second Consultant Paediatrician at Bedford, he encouraged oversees doctors to come to Bedford for further training and was a visiting Consultant and Professor to the Children’s Hospital in Benghazi, Libya, for twelve years.

After retirement, he went to the Al Corniche Hospital in Abu Dhabi for a month and ended up staying for five years, setting up and running a special care baby unit. He was interested in the history of medicine and medical philately and combined the interest by writing articles for the Medical Philatelic magazine MediTheme.

He is survived by his wife Alice, two sons and a daughter and four grandchildren.