AN expert in respiratory medicine has been awarded a prestigious medal.

Professor Peter Ormerod, from Helmshore, won the British Thoracic Society medal at the society’s winter scientific meeting.

He said he was ‘delighted’ to receive the accolade at the QE Conference Centre in London.

The medal is given each year to an individual who has made outstanding contributions to respiratory medicine and the society over their career.

Prof Ormerod, who used to be a consultant chest physician at East Lancashire Hospitals Trust, said: “I was delighted to receive this award from my peers, as it confirms that my lifetime's passion and interest has been of great use to colleagues, and most importantly patients.”

Mr Ormerod was educated at Tunstead Primary School and then Bacup and Rawtenstall Grammar School.

Having suffered from a form of tuberculosis at the age of seven, he decided to become a doctor there and then.

After qualification at Manchester University in 1974, and training in Manchester and Birmingham, he was appointed chest consultant in Blackburn in 1980.

He was tasked with reducing the amount of TB, with Blackburn then having the fourth highest incidence in the UK.

Various measures introduced by him, brought about a rapid reduction in adult and particularly childhood TB.

He said: “I remember vividly the painful injections I had to have for three months, accompanied by unpleasant tablets for a year.

“I would hide behind the curtain when the nurse came to give my daily injections.

“By reducing treatment to six months for lung TB by incorporating new drugs, adult TB was halved in five years, and the treatment was much more pleasant than mine.

“Children with a strongly positive skin test showing that they had been infected, were given a a few months of preventive treatment with drugs, and this reduced childhood TB by 90 per cent in five years.

“This approach was then adopted nationally.”

He was made a professor of medicine by the University of Central Lancashire in 2000, and also Manchester University in 2011.