Death of Sir John Batten

Sir John Batten, who died recently (http://www.bmj.com/content/348/bmj.g92;
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/10400058/Sir-John-Batten.html) was a key contributor to our Witness Seminar on ‘Cystic fibrosis’ (CF).

By the 1960s, improved therapies meant that sufferers from this disease, who usually died in childhood, were surviving into adolescence and young adulthood. This provided new challenges to the physicians who looked after them, in developing physiotherapy and therapeutic strategies that could be self-administered; and by providing hospital accommodation when necessary that was not on children’s wards. Batten was a pioneer in spearheading the care of these patients, opening the first clinic for adult CF sufferers in 1965, at the Brompton Hospital. He also trained many young doctors and nurses who in turn established adult clinics and centres across the UK. Some of his own reminiscences, and those of colleagues, are included in the published volume from that Seminar

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