CHEMOTHERAPY will soon be more comfortable for thousands of people worldwide thanks to one woman from a Redbridge hospital trust.

Paula Tinniswood, of Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals Trust (BHRUT) first came up with a way to make chemo easier for cancer patients 10 years ago.

When she was working as general cancer manager for a hospital trust in Kent she saw a friend’s mother forced to stick her arm in a bucket of warm water to make her veins visible enough to inject the drugs.

She said: “She had to put her arm in warm water to help dilate her veins and I just thought, ‘no more – there must be a better way.”

Ms Tinniswood, now a cancer lead at BHRUT, was put in touch with a company called Green Cross Medico a few years ago, working with owner Giovanni Benedetti to make her idea a reality.

Together they came up with the “airglove”. Attached to a special machine, the plastic glove can warm up patients’ arms ready for chemo injections in just a few minutes.

After winning an NHS innovator award for it in 2010, Ms Tinniswood finally saw three airgloves arrive at BHRUT’s Queen’s Hospital site in Romford last week (August 9).

Worth around £700 each, Mr Benedetti donated them as a thank you for her genius idea.

Ms Tinniswood added: “This will help us to improve patient care and provide more comfort for those receiving chemotherapy.

“Although they don’t look much like what I designed now, it was lovely to see something from my original concept coming into our hospitals.”

Green Cross Medico will soon start selling them to hospitals across the world to make chemotherapy less uncomfortable for thousands of patients.