Agnes Yewande Savage

Probably the first West African woman to qualify in medicine, Agnes was an outstanding student at Edinburgh. She obtained first class honours in all of her subjects, winning awards in skin disease, forensic medicine and receiving the prestigious Dorothy Gilfillan Memorial Prize for the best woman graduate in 1929.

 

Born in Edinburgh in 1906 to a Nigerian father and Scottish mother, Agnes faced huge institutional barriers – dictated both by race and sex – once she qualified. She later served as a junior medical officer in Ghana before establishing a nurses’ training school in Korle-Bu Hospital.

 

Agnes retired relatively early in 1947 but lived out the rest of her days in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire.