Dame Claire Bertschinger  –acknowledgement statement January 2010

“I am most honoured to be appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the New Year’s 2010 Honours List, which has come as an enormous surprise to me.  I am deeply moved to be receiving it in recognition of my many and varied nursing endeavours over the years. Since retiring from field work, I have trained other medical professionals to work in resource poor settings and have continually sought to raise awareness of the key issues in global public health. Increasingly, I have become convinced of the centrality of education in making and sustaining any improvements in the developing world.

It is therefore my most sincere wish that in receiving this award, I will be able to further raise awareness of the need for education in resource poor settings. It has been shown that for women in particular, increased education not only radically improves their own health, but also that of their families and children. The empowerment of women, educationally and economically, is a major weapon in the fight against child mortality in the developing world.

I should just like to thank all of my family, friends and colleagues who have supported me in many wonderful and varied ways over the years and who have added immeasurable value to my life. I am deeply grateful for my experiences as a nurse, whether joy-filled or painful, and in accepting this most prestigious award, I hereby renew my continued commitment to increase female education and independence, in the drive to eradicate poverty and ill-health in the developing world.”  

Biography

Claire Bertschinger worked with the International Committee of the Red Cross as a nurse in over a dozen war zones across the world including Ethiopia, Lebanon and Afghanistan.  She cared for starving children during the 1984/5 famine in Ethiopia and, with limited food available, was forced to decide which children to feed and which to let die.  Claire featured in Michael Buerk’s first BBC news report of the famine which inspired Bob Geldof to establish Band Aid and Live Aid.

Claire is driven by the belief that under-5 child mortality can be reduced by two thirds by 2015 in line with the aims of the Millennium Development Goals – and that this can be achieved by the empowerment and education of women worldwide.

To this end, she now works as the Director for the Diploma in Tropical Nursing course at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine where she prepares nurses from all over the world, to work in the most hostile and difficult environments.  She believes that by seeding nursing knowledge into communities, deaths from malaria, measles, meningitis, and diarrhoea can be vastly reduced.  She is also a trustee and ambassador for The African Children's Educational Trust (www.a-cet.org), an organisation that works at a local level in Africa to provide schools and education for rural communities.  Claire is also Patron for Promise Nepal working directly with leprosy sufferers and their families in Nepal. She travels worldwide to raise awareness, secure funding for individual student sponsorship and to help build new schools.

A practicing Buddhist for the last 16 years, Claire helps to run her local Sokka Gakki Buddhist group

Following a successful nursing career in the UK, Claire's first post abroad was as a medic for the Scientific Exploration Society in Panama Papua New Guinea and Sulawesi.  She went on to accumulate vast experience from many years working in emergency disaster relief, primarily in war zones, with the International Committee of the Red Cross.  She has worked in over a dozen countries including Afghanistan, Kenya, Lebanon, Sudan, Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast and Liberia.

“In her was vested the power of life and death.  She had become God-like, and that is unbearable for anyone.”  Sir Bob Geldof




“It was Claire Bertschinger, who brought the world’s attention to the starvation in Ethiopia.  If not for her, there would have been no BBC cameras, no Live Aid, no Bob Geldof, and no outpouring of compassion and camaraderie that restored one’s faith in humanity, if only for a few minutes.  Bertschinger’s courage is matched only by her conviction; her tireless effort to comfort the hungry and dying.  Her biography, ‘Moving Mountains’ is a beautiful story that needed to be told and, more importantly, needs to be read.”
Janine di Giovanni, author of: Madness Visible: A Memoir of War.

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June 2009

Following on from a successful nursing career in the UK, Claire's first post abroad was as a medic for the Scientific Exploration Society in Panama Papua New Guinea and Sulawesi. She went on to accumulate vast experience from many years working in emergency disaster relief, primarily in war zones, with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). She has worked in over a dozen countries including Afghanistan, Kenya, Lebanon, Sudan, Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast and Liberia.

Prior to joining the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
Claire worked as training officer in the Health Division of ICRC Geneva.

She was awarded the Florence Nightingale Medal from the Red Cross in recognition of her work in conflict situations, the BISH medal from the Scientific Exploration Society, gained a Masters in Medical Anthropology, and has published her biography "Moving Mountains" (Transworld, 2005) to critical acclaim.

She has subsequently received Woman of the Year, Window to the World award and the Human Rights and Nursing Award. For her contribution to Nursing and Education she has recived an Honorary Doctorate from both Brunel and De Montfort Universities.

Claire is the Course Director for the Diploma in Tropical Nursing and remains passionately committed to issues in the developing world. She is an ambassador for A-CET (African Children's Educational Trust) travelling world-wide raising awareness and funds for the charity. She is also a regular voluntary worker here in the UK (Age Concern). She gives motivational talks based on her life experiences with the aim of inspiring people to create value and make a difference to our planet.

One of the most enduring images of the Ethiopian famine that shocked the world in 1984 was that of the young International Red Cross nurse who, surrounded by thousands of starving people and with limited supplies, had the terrible task of choosing which children to feed, knowing that those she turned away might not last the night.

‘In her was vested the power of life and death,’
Bob Geldof