My brother Steve Jarrett, who has died aged 74, of leukaemia, spent his working life with Unicef, the United Nations Children’s Fund. This involved extensive travel and his career meant lengthy periods living in Latin America, China, Denmark and the US.
Steve was born in Ipswich, Suffolk, to Bill Jarrett, a local government official, and his wife, Belle (nee Denny). Our father was a keen sportsman and had played for Ipswich Town FC when it was an amateur club in the 1920s, so sport featured prominently as we were growing up. Steve was a good cricketer and played several times for Suffolk Colts. Despite moving away from the UK, he was always keen to discover the latest Ipswich Town football result.
Steve attended Northgate grammar school in Ipswich and graduated in civil engineering from the University of Southampton. Following an intense course learning Spanish, he headed for Paraguay as a UN volunteer, managing projects such as the installation of water pumps in rural communities. It was in Paraguay that Steve met his wife-to-be, Poonsun Lam – they were married in 1974.
His next postings in the 1970s were in Bolivia and Guatemala, with Unicef. These involved visits to neighbouring countries for regional meetings as well as lengthy journeys within countries.
After moving to the Unicef headquarters in New York, Steve’s focus was turning towards health, and he gained a master’s degree in public health from Columbia University. He spent two years in the mid-1980s as Unicef senior health officer in China, where the aim was universal child immunisation. Another posting was in Copenhagen, as a senior adviser on health systems, particularly dealing with the effective supply of drugs to sub-Saharan countries. He returned to New York and his final position was deputy director of the supply division; this role included strategies for the global supply of vaccines and involved liaison with pharmaceutical companies.
After officially retiring from Unicef in 2012, Steve took on part-time consultancies and these included the production of an immunisation policy guide and an investigation of the heat stability of vaccines, both for the World Health Organization. Throughout his career, Steve published many articles, some of which appeared in the journal Vaccine.
Despite the onset of illness, Steve continued to work and one of his final articles concerned innovations in vaccine packaging.
Steve is survived by Poonsun, their children, Emily and Geoffrey, and four grandchildren, and me.
