GILL HORSFIELD

Gill was born in Gloucestershire in 1933. She trained as a nurse at Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham and as a midwife at the London Hospital. In 1959 she went as a lay missionary to Virika Hospital, Fort Portal, Uganda, working with the Sisters of Our Lady of Africa. In 1963 the Medical Mission Sisters were invited to take over the hospital and after a year working with MMS Gill decided to join them and returned to England and entered the novitiate in 1964. After profession Gill returned to East Africa to work in Nangina Hospital, in Kenya for 6 years. She returned to England to be trained as a Health Visitor and then returned to Kisii District in Kenya as the diocesan public healt nurse, training community health workers for the small mission dispensaries and health centres. In 1986 Gill was asked to start community based health care in the slums of Nairobi and spent 20 years working in Korogocho, a very poor slum. In 1988 the first cases of AIDS were found in the slums and for the next 18 years her main work was homebased care of patients with AIDS in Korogocho.

In 2006 Gill repatriated to England where she is involved in giving mission appeals in parishes in this country and plans to work with the homeless in London.