Charles Farthing

Farthing was born on 22 April 1953 in Christchurch, New Zealand.[2] His father was an accountant and his mother was a music teacher.[3] He was educated at Christ's College, Christchurch, an independent boys school.[1] As a child he had considered entering the priesthood.[4] He went on to study medicine at the University of Otago in Dunedin.[1]

Farthing began his medical career in New Zealand where he practiced as a dermatologist.[4] After five years,[1][2] he moved abroad and worked for a year in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.[3] He then moved to England and joined St Stephen's Hospital in Chelsea, London.[1][2] Between 1985 and 1987, the numbers of AIDS patients treated at St Stephen's rose from a dozen to over 1000.[1] From 1985 to 1988, he was involved in clinical trials for the antiretroviral drugs Thymosin, AZT and foscarnet.[1] In 1987, he helped found the Kobler Center at St Stephen's Hospital which specialised in the treatment and research of HIV/AIDS.[5] It was one of the first wards in the United Kingdom to specialise in the area.[2] He was chair of the all-party parliamentary committee on AIDS during the late 1980s,[6] and was instrumental in guiding the governments reaction to the AIDS crisis.[1]

In 1988, he was awarded a Winston Churchill fellowship which allowed him to move to the United States of America where he studied AIDS at the Bellevue Hospital in New York.[6] He later became the director of the hospital's AIDS treatment program.[2] In 1994, he moved to Los Angeles where he became the principal investigator of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, and in 2001, he was promoted to medical director.[1] In 2007, he left the United States for Hong Kong where he joined Merck Sharp & Dohme.[5] At the time of his death, he was director of medical affairs for infectious diseases in the Asia-Pacific.[2]

Farthing died on 6 April 2014 of a heart attack while travelling in a taxi in Hong Kong.[1][2] His funeral was held at Church of St Michael and All Angels, an Anglican church in Christchurch on 22 April 2014. He is buried on Banks Peninsula.[7]

Farthing was gay.[4] At the time of his death he was in a relationship with Dougie Lui, a hotelier.[1][2] He had owned a number of cats but did not have any children.[4]