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Naga Munchetty

Naga Munchetty

ONE of the most recognisable faces in the UK, Naga Munchetty presents BBC’s flagship Breakfast programme, and often makes headlines, while telling news stories. Last year, she has revealed on her BBC Radio 5 Live show that she has a debilitating womb condition, adenomyosis, and kickstarted a campaign for a change in the way women’s health is treated. At the start of her show on May 22, 2023, she told listeners: “Right now, as I sit here talking to you, I am in pain. Constant, nagging pain… And I will have some level of pain for the entire show and for the rest of the day until I go to sleep.” She revealed on air how she had been struggling to get a treatment after decades of painful, heavy 10-day periods that sometimes made her lose consciousness. A flare-up, after for 30 days of non-stop bleeding, was so bad that her husband had to call an ambulance. “The pain was so terrible I couldn’t move, turn over, sit up. I screamed non-stop for 45 minutes,” she told listeners. One in 10 women is thought to have adenomyosis, yet it can often go undiagnosed for years. It took 32 years for Munchetty to obtain a diagnosis. Later, speaking at an evidence session of the Women and Equalities Committee of the House of Commons in October, she said the process of being diagnosed with adenomyosis was “infuriating”, after being told from the age of 15, ‘Suck it up’, ‘You’re normal, and ‘Every one goes through this’. “Especially to be told that by male doctors who have never experienced a period, and then by female doctors who had not experienced period pain,” said Munchetty. Since her Radio 5 show, NHS England has updated its website with detailed information on the condition. Earlier, its reference to adenomyosis had a link which took readers straight to the hysterectomy page. It is not the first time her interventions have brought oft-neglected issues to the forefront, such as the conversation about how women’s pain is viewed after she shared her experience of contraceptive coil fitting on her BBC Radio 5 Live show, prompting many women to share their stories. Revealing that having an IUD inserted was “one of the most traumatic physical experiences” she has ever had, Munchetty explained how some women are made to feel that their pain is something to endure, not a problem to solve, particularly when it comes to gynaecological procedures such as having a coil fitted. “We all know that coils are safe and effective and lots of women have no problem at all with them,” she has said, “but like all medical procedures, there’s a vast range of experiences.” Her show led to a change in the NICE (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) guidelines for pain relief to be offered to women for intrauterine device (IUD), commonly known as ‘the coil’ and inserted into the uterus, procedures. She is also known for making decisive interventions on BBC Breakfast, but her forthright views have also landed her in trouble. A crucial test came in 2019, when the BBC ruled that she has breached the guidelines over comments she made about a tweet from Donald Trump, in which the then US president asked four female politicians of colour to “go back” to “places from which they came”. Discussing the comment on the show, Munchetty said: “Every time I have been told, as a woman of colour, to go back to where I came from, that was embedded in racism. Now I’m not accusing anyone of anything here, but you know what certain phrases mean.” As the BBC said she had gone “beyond what the guidelines allow for”, there was an outpouring of support for Munchetty, with dozens of black actors and broadcasters called on the broadcaster to overturn its decision in an open letter. Within a week, then BBC director-general Lord Hall reversed the decision, noting her words were not “sufficient to merit a partial up hold” of the complaint against her. Later, writing in the backdrop of the global protests that followed the killing of George Floyd in the US, Munchetty – daughter of an Indian mother and Mauritian father, both nurses – opened up her experiences of racism. “You never forget the first time you hear that painful and distressing word. I was seven, when someone I thought was a friend at school, told me we could no longer hang out. They used the P-word, making it clear the reason was because of the colour of my skin,” she wrote. She was also a part of an equal pay campaign at the BBC in 2017, which led to all the main presenters of BBC Breakfast getting paid equally for their work. Born and raised in South London, Munchetty studied English at Leeds University. A post graduate diploma in newspaper journalism from City University led to her first jobs writing for the city pages at The Evening Standard and The Observer. She then moved to TV, joining Reuters Financial Television as a reporter, and then working for CNBC Europe, Channel 4 News and Bloomberg Television before landing at BBC Two’s business show Working Lunch in 2008. In 2014, she switched over to BBC Breakfast, the UK’s most popular morning news pro gramme, and has never looked back. In 2021, she ventured into radio, presenting three days a week in the mid-morning slot at Radio 5 Live. She also presents Claimed and Shamed for BBC One, and is a familiar voice on Radio 4’s PM, Money box, and Pick of the Week. She is passionate about keeping an active lifestyle and ran the London Marathon in 2013, raising money for mental health charity United Response, and cycled 100km for Ride the Night in 2015. And, golf is a passion she shares with her husband, TV director James Haggar, who she has been married to since 2007. She plays off a handicap of 8 and in 2013 was crowned the winner of Celebrity Mastermind on the subject of The Ryder Cup. She is a patron of Action for A-T, which funds medical research to identify a cure for Ataxia Telangiectasia or treatments that delay or pre vent the disabling effects of this devastating childhood condition. She also works with Prince’s Trust as chair of their UK2030 Taskforce. She appeared in the BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing, paired with Pasha Kovalev, in 2016, and was a judge on the Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction in the same year.

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