Faith Minnion, a political campaigner and health worker in Oxfordshire for more than 20 years, has died aged 73.

She started as a cardiac technician in the NHS in her early 20s and was present in the operating theatre when the first British heart transplant was performed at the National Heart Hospital in London.

A keen traveller, Miss Minnion went on to live in Australia in the late 1960s before returning to the UK a few years later to live in Oxford.

She started working at the Radcliffe Infirmary, before later moving on to the cardiac department at the John Radcliffe Hospital.

She was equally committed to looking after her parents as she was her career and cared for them when they later moved to the Oxford area to be closer to their daughter.

Originally living in North Oxford, she later moved to Warren Crescent, in Wood Farm, although she moved to a flat in Lime Walk, Headington, in recent years because of ill health, which had forced her into early retirement when she was in her 50s.

Her friend Margaret Stanton said: "Faith faced personal problems with little complaint, she was always ready to carry on with her life and return to activity in her various causes."

Miss Minnion was active in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the Anti-Apartheid Movement. She was also a member of the Oxford Labour Party and involved in union activities when she worked for the NHS.

Mrs Stanton said: "Faith had wide-ranging skills, whether organising meetings, demonstrations or elections for political candidates. Or the quite different ability to organise stalls at outdoor and indoor events, to raise funds."

However, because of her principles, Miss Minnion felt she had no choice but to leave the Labour Party following the UK's involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Over the past six years she spent a great deal of time working with two groups in the city, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and the Network of Oxford Women for Justice and Peace.

Despite her declining health - with various battles against cancer - she committed much of her time to both groups until earlier this year .

Mrs Stanton said: "She lived a life truly devoted to working for a more just and peaceful world." '