The Croydon Medical Society

Agnelo Fernandes was born in Goa, went to school in Wandsworth, South London and attended King’s College, London and Charing Cross and Westminster Medical School. His interests include minor surgery, dermatology, teaching and quality improvement of health services through innovation and transformation. A GP at Parchmore Medical Centre in Thornton Heath, Croydon for 30 years he is also a GP Trainer, member of the South London RCGP Faculty (8yrs) and a Governor at Royal Russell School, Croydon (16yrs). He was previously an Educational Supervisor of GP Trainees out of hours (20 yrs) having initially set up the scheme, a GP appraiser (15yrs), a member of the Croydon Local Medical Committee (2002-2017).

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Miss Ranee Thakar is a Consultant Obstetrician and Gynaecologist and a Subspecialist in Urogynaecology at Croydon University Hospital as well as being an Honorary Senior Lecturer at St George’s University of London. She is the Urogynaecology Lead and has previously served as the Clinical Business Unit Lead in her trust. She is the current Vice President for Global Health and the co-chair of the RCOG Race Equality Taskforce.

She is passionate about research and recognises its vital role in advancing health. Her publications include many original papers in peer-reviewed journals and chapters in books. She has edited three textbooks. Having previously focused on the diagnosis and repair of obstetric anal sphincter injuries (OASI) through research and training, she is currently leading on a joint Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and Royal College of Midwifery national prevention project funded by the Health Foundation, which has demonstrated a significant reduction in OASI rates.

She has a lifelong commitment to the improvement of women’s health globally and intends to pursue new initiatives in global health in her capacity as the Vice President of the RCOG.

Anne retired a few years ago from a career spanning 30 years of working as a Private Medical Secretary/PA.  For 10 years she worked in the NHS and then, for the next 22 years, for a very busy Consultant Obstetrician & Gynaecologist.  Anne has been married to Michael, a retired Golf Club Pro, for over 40 years and they have three children and five grand-children.  Hobbies include photography, gardening, travelling and volunteering.

Dr Khalid Khan has been a Principal in General Practice at the Parkside Group Practice in South Croydon since 1997.

He is a GP trainer, tutor for King's College London School of Medicine and a former community pharmacist. He is former Board member of the South Croydon Primary Care Group(PCG) and of the South London Faculty of the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP.)

Dr Khan is Fellow of the RCGP; Fellow and Steering Committee Member for the Chinese Medical Institute and Register (C.M.I.R.), a Licensed NLP Trainer and author of Mnemonics & Study Tips for Medical Students (CRC Press). He is current Quizmeister of the Croydon Medical Society.

I qualified from Cambridge University and the Middlesex Hospital in 1985 and currently still work as a consultant gastroenterologist at Croydon University Hospital. Exploration and the new are my great loves and administration my great hate.

I was a member of the Cambridge Travellers and Explorers Club and organized an expedition to Zanskar in the Indian Himalayas in 1981. I was the first to discover an old unused route across the Himalayas, providing the Indian ministry of Tourism with the first description of the route. I have been to the central Congo, have crossed the Sahara, climbed the Hoggar mountains, and visited Mongolia and Tibet more recently.

In medicine, I have had an active research career crossing many different disciplines. I was the first to prove that Helicobacter pylori was mainly acquired in childhood with little on the way of acquisition in adulthood, the first to show that most cardiovascular risk factors were the result of chronic inflammation, the first to show that bowel inflammation is affected by exercise, fibre intake and obesity which are all risk factors for colorectal cancer, and the first to show that counterintuitively obesity is risk factor for the development of Crohn’s disease. Enthusiasm for the novel led me down one blind alley, being the first to propose that Helicobacter pylori infection is a risk factor for coronary heart disease. The association turned out to be the result of residual confounding but nevertheless it was the forerunner of the contemporary interest in the role of gut flora in the pathogenesis of coronary heart disease.

John Spicer qualified from the Middlesex Hospital in 1977, spending the few years thereafter in various hospital posts in the Midlands, before washing up in Croydon as a GP trainee with Albert Nawrocki in 1981. He started working at Woodside Health Centre, South Norwood in 1985 after a couple of years travelling and working overseas. He's still there, at the time of writing ! Other medical interests have included undergraduate and postgraduate teaching in which he's had various roles, leading to being Head of Primary Care Education for HEE South London. He is still a teacher of, and writer about, medical ethics, and is particularly proud of A Handbook of Primary Care Ethics: a large book published in 2018 and winner of a BMA prize. He is very interested in the arts and medicine [being a mediocre guitarist] and a trustee/director of the London Arts and Health Forum.

Abdul Sultan is a consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist with a special interest in urogynaecology. He has been based at Croydon University Hospital since August 1996.