A UK-based Maltese doctor has been made a Dame by Queen Elizabeth II, in recognition of her trailblazing 40-year medical career in the UK.  

Clare Gerada is the first Maltese woman to be awarded a damehood by the Queen, who named Gerada in her yearly honours list “for services to general practice”.  It is the second time Gerada was named in the Queen’s birthday honours, after she was awarded an MBE in 2000 for “services to medicine and drug misusers”.  

Gerada said she was “humbled” by the award.  

“I’m proud to have been able to serve my patients, my profession and my community for more than 30 years,” Gerada wrote on Twitter on Friday night.  

“I’m also told I’m the first Maltese woman to receive this award. Chuffed”.  

Gerada’s parents were both Maltese who emigrated to the UK in the 1960s. Inspired by her father, a doctor from Żejtun, she studied medicine at University College London and trained in psychiatry.  

She led the Royal College of General Practitioners as its first female chair in 50 years and is an expert on mental health and substance misuse.  

Gerada serves as the medical director of NHS Practitioner Health, a state-run confidential service for UK-based doctors and dentists who suffer addiction and mental health issues, and also continues to see patients as a GP.  

“I began working in general practice as a 10-year-old, when I would accompany my father on his rounds after his Saturday morning surgery,” she wrote in a 2010 editorial for the Malta Medical Journal.

She is one of 12 women to be appointed a Dame Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire this year.