A tear rolls down Shama Omar’s face. She is describing the pain of her disabled daughter’s death last year, after 29 years of attentive care. It is a familiar tale of delays and stretched health service resources. “If the GP had seen her on that day, my daughter would have not died,” she says.
Now, she is surviving on one cooked meal every two weeks, deciding on whether to pay for council tax, food or water next. “I need to take cancer medication, which gives me hot flushes but I can’t afford to have the fan on all the time,” says Omar. “I had to think whether to spend £4.60 for the bus here, that could have helped me make meals for two days.”
