Lorraine Levy was professor of medicine at the University of Zimbabwe Medical School. She was born Lorraine Moyle Woest in South Africa, the daughter of William Frederick Woest, an engineer, and Dorothy Moyle Woest, a housewife. She attended Jean Rennie School in Lusaka. She then went on to attend University College Rhodesia, where degrees were awarded by the University of Birmingham in the UK.

Between 1974 and 1976 she held junior appointments in Salisbury, Rhodesia, as a junior resident medical officer and a senior house officer. She was an assistant lecturer in the department of medicine, University of Rhodesia, from July 1977 to July 1979, and then a lecturer, an associate professor and finally a professor. The university was renamed University of Zimbabwe following independence in 1980.

Levy had a longstanding interest in oncology, and wrote several papers on lymphomas in South Central Africa. She was active in the development of the Zimbabwe National Cancer Registry in 1985, helping to ensure that it continued to receive funding from the Ministry of Health, even during difficult economic times.

Outside medicine, she listed music and tennis as her interests when she was elected to the fellowship of the RCP in 1988.

In 1966 she married Laurence Fraser Levy, a surgeon. They had two sons. Lorraine Levy died at her home in Harare.

RCP editor

[IACR (International Association of Cancer Registries) Newsletter, No. 32, October-June 2002, p.16]