Anne Szarewski

Anne Szarewski (1 September 1959 – 24 August 2013) was a doctor who helped improve how cervical screening samples are tested and was involved in developing the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine.

Early life and education

Anne Szarewski was born in London in 1959, the only child of older Polish parents. She went to Streatham and Clapham High School for Girls before studying medicine at London's Middlesex Hospital, graduating MBBS in 1982.

Career

Szarewski began her career as a doctor at the Whittington Hospital and Royal Free Hospital. She then moved into family planning and sexual health, joining the Margaret Pyke Centre in 1986. She trained in colposcopy at the Royal Northern Hospital under Mr Albert Singer. It was here she developed her interest in cervical cancer detection and screening.

Szarewski became the editor of the Journal of Family Planning and Reproductive Health Care in 2003.

This work was followed by a larger trial testing HPV screening – the HART study. Published in 2003, evidence from this played a role in the decision of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) to recommended that HPV testing could be used in primary cervical screening in 2004.

1988: Cervical Smear Test 1989: The Breast Book 1991: Hormonal Contraception 1994: Contraception 1995: A woman's guide to the cervical smear test 1996: The cervical smear test 1998: Contraception 2003: Contraceptive dilemmas 2004: Contraception 2006: Contraceptive dilemmas

Personal life

Szarewski married South African journalist Lester Venter when she was in her 40s. She loved reading, theatre, classical music and art exhibitions. Szarewski was a ‘lover of the arts’. Classical music was her first love, with Richard Wagner her favourite composer, but she also enjoyed David Bowie – one colleague said she had visited the David Bowie exhibition at the V&A museum twice because she enjoyed it so much. An inquest later found that she had died of acute haemorrhagic pancreatitis.