Myra Garrett obituary

My colleague and mentor Myra Garrett, who has died aged 92, was a pioneering development worker, philanthropist, and advocate for peace and social justice.After leaving the US for the UK in 1970, she became a transformative figure in east London, co-founding organisations such as the Limehouse Project, in 1984; the Tower Hamlets Health Strategy Group, in 1986, which gained charity status in 1994 and was rebranded as Social Action for Health in 2000; and the Bangladeshi Mental Health Forum, in 1999. These initiatives addressed critical issues such as mental health, housing, education and women’s empowerment, profoundly affecting marginalised communities.A trailblazer in public health, Myra introduced innovative programmes such as the health bus, which took essential services to underserved areas, and the continence project (1992), which earned the Commonwealth award for excellence in women’s health in 1997. Her Giving Up Smoking During Ramadan campaign, launched in the late 80s, evolved into the widely adopted Smoke-Free Ramadan initiative, showcasing her ability to turn cultural insights into effective health interventions

John Hunt pays tribute to daughter’s bravery as killer jailed for triple murder

A BBC presenter whose family were murdered by a misogynist with a crossbow has said he hopes women can be inspired by how his daughter ended her relationship with her killer.On the day that Kyle Clifford was sentenced to a whole-life order for the triple murder last year, John Hunt described the former soldier as a psychopath disguised as an ordinary human being.Paying tribute to his daughter Louise Hunt and the way she had shown grace and empathy when breaking up with Clifford, Hunt used an emotionally charged victim impact statement to describe how the love of his family sustained him.“I hope women round the world will take Louise’s bravery as a shining beacon for their lives,” he said, citing his daughter’s disgust at Clifford’s racism and belittling language. “If you feel enough is enough, then it is

NHS England to cut workforce by half as Streeting restructures

NHS England will lose half its staff and a huge swathe of its senior management team as part of a brutal restructuring under its new boss.Its workforce will shrink from 13,000 to about 6,500 as entire teams are axed to save money and avoid “duplication” with officials at the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC).NHS England staff said they were “in shock and awe” at the scale of the job cuts, which go far beyond the loss of 2,000 posts to save £175m announced just weeks ago.The DHSC will also become smaller as a result of a process that will see it working much more closely from April with NHS England, though it will shed far fewer staff than the latter. The changes will give Wes Streeting, the health secretary, far more control over the organisation that is responsible for the operational performance of the health service in England

Starmer decries ‘worst of all worlds’ benefits system ahead of deep cuts

Britain’s benefits system is the “worst of all worlds”, with the number of people out of work or training “indefensible and unfair”, the prime minister has said as he prepares for deep cuts to disability payments.Addressing a private meeting of Labour MPs on Monday evening, Keir Starmer said he would take tough decisions to cut the bill for working age health and disability benefits, which is expected to hit £70bn by 2030.The government has already vowed to cut £3bn over the next three years and is expected to announce billions more in savings from the personal independence payment (Pip), the main disability benefit.The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is preparing to publish a green paper on sickness and disability benefit reform in the next few days ahead of the chancellor’s spring statement at the end of the month.The prime minister’s intervention comes amid deep disquiet in the parliamentary party about the scale of the changes likely to be faced by some of the most vulnerable

USAid cuts could create untreatable TB bug ‘resistant to everything we have’

Dangerous new forms of tuberculosis (TB) for which there is no treatment could emerge as a result of US aid cuts, a top doctor has warned.Dr Lucica Ditiu, who heads the Stop TB Partnership, said she feared that interruptions to people’s treatment would allow the airborne bug to mutate into a new, untreatable form.Moreover, a lack of diagnostic services, which have also been badly affected by the Trump administration’s aid cuts, would allow TB to spread more easily, she said.Programmes working to detect, treat and research new ways to fight TB are among nearly 10,000 health projects worldwide that received notices at the end of February that the US was terminating their funding after a review of aid spending.The US has historically provided between $200m (£155m) and $250m a year in bilateral funding to poorer countries for their work on TB, the World Health Organization said last week, warning that “abrupt funding cuts” would “cripple TB prevention and treatment efforts, reverse decades of progress, and endanger millions of lives”

UK child sexual abuse survivors take standup comedy courses

Survivors of child sexual abuse are taking courses in standup comedy to help process their trauma, in the first such scheme in the UK.The comedian Angie Belcher, the first person to get standup comedy prescribed on the NHS through her project Comedy on Referral, ran the two-day programme in Bristol last week.“Comedy is often tragedy plus time, and these are people who have already gone through major counselling, are in recovery and are now looking to do something different to keep themselves busy,” said Belcher.“Saying that something is funny doesn’t mean it’s not sad or serious,” she said. Standup comedy can be part of recovery because it gives power back to the victim by laughing at their oppressor