During lockdown Averil Pooten Watan organised pop up clinics for undocumented migrants, many of whom were working with older and other vulnerable people. She illustrates the huge impact community volunteers can have. By reaching out to the most marginalised, she not only saved lives, but stopped the spread of Covid-19.

In this fifth series of Rebel Women, we’re resetting a little. Because the women we’re featuring this time were definitely not our usual “troublemakers”. Some of them may have been in their previous lives, but in the spring of 2020 they were the ones holding everything together.

This current series of Rebel Women is part of Beyond Medicine: a social history of women and pandemics. Visit our online exhibition at www.beyondmedicine.org.uk You may also like to watch our short film about women and pandemic on You Tube.

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Special thanks to the National Lottery Heritage Fund for funding this episode.

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