David Bainton was a senior lecturer in the Centre for Applied Public Health Medicine at the University of Wales College of Medicine and an honorary consultant in public health medicine at Gwent Health Authority. He was born in Usk, Monmouthshire, the son of Alan Bainton, director of prison administration at the Home Office, and Constance Evelyn née Perks, a housewife. He was educated at Emanuel School, Battersea, and Bedford School, and then went on to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, and University College Hospital (UCH), London, for his clinical studies.

He held junior posts at UCH and was then a house physician at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge. From 1967 to 1969, he was a senior house officer at Cardiff Royal Infirmary. From 1970 to 1973 he worked at the Medical Research Council’s epidemiology unit at Cardiff. He trained in epidemiology with Archie Cochrane [Munk’s Roll, Vol.VIII, p.95] and in social medicine with Jerry Morris [Munk’s Roll, Vol.XII, web]. Between 1975 and 1985, he was a specialist in community medicine at Avon and Bristol area health authorities. For the next three years he was based in Huddersfield. From 1989 he was a senior lecturer at the University of Wales School of Medicine.

At the time of his election to the fellowship of the RCP he listed gardening, jazz and carpentry among his interests. He died from metastatic ocular melanoma, leaving a wife, Carolyn, and three children from a previous marriage.

RCP editor

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