Claire Bertschinger facts for kids
Dame Claire Bertschinger is a brave nurse from both the UK and Switzerland. She is known for helping people who are suffering around the world. Her important work in Ethiopia in 1984 inspired the famous music events, Band Aid and Live Aid. These events raised a lot of money to help people in need. Claire Bertschinger has received many awards for her amazing work, including the Florence Nightingale Medal in 1991. She was also made a Dame by Queen Elizabeth II in 2010 for her services to nursing and helping people internationally.
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About Claire Bertschinger
Claire Bertschinger grew up in Sheering, a village near Bishop's Stortford in Essex, England. Her father was Swiss, and her mother was British.
When she was young, Claire had dyslexia, which made it hard for her to read and write until she was 14. After her family got a television in the 1960s, she watched a film called The Inn of the Sixth Happiness. This movie was about Gladys Aylward, an English missionary who helped people in China. Watching it made Claire think, "That's what I want to do!" She later studied at Brunel University and earned a master's degree in Medical Anthropology in 1997.
Claire Bertschinger is a Buddhist and practices Nichiren Buddhism. She joined a worldwide Buddhist group called Soka Gakkai International in 1994.
In 2005, she published her autobiography, Moving Mountains. This book shares her experiences from around the world and explains how her spiritual beliefs led her to Buddhism. Some of the money from her book sales goes to The African Children's Educational Trust, a charity in Britain.
Claire's Career Helping Others
After training and working as a nurse in the UK, Claire Bertschinger joined an expedition called Operation Drake. She worked as a medic with Colonel John Blashford-Snell and the Scientific Exploration Society in places like Panama, Papua New Guinea, and Sulawesi.
After this, she joined the emergency disaster relief team of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Because she had dual nationality (both British and Swiss), she could work in war zones. Through the ICRC, she has helped people in over a dozen conflict areas. These include Afghanistan, Kenya, Lebanon, Sudan, Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast, and Liberia. She also worked at the ICRC headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, where she trained other health workers.
Claire Bertschinger is an ambassador and a trustee for The African Children's Educational Trust. She is also a patron for Promise Nepal and volunteers for the charity Age UK.
In 2010, Queen Elizabeth II honored Claire Bertschinger by making her a Dame Commander of the British Empire. This was for her great work in nursing and helping people around the world. In 2012, she was also made a Deputy Lieutenant of Hertfordshire.
As of 2024, she has retired from her role as Director for the Diploma in Tropical Nursing course at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She is now an Honorary Assistant Professor there.
Helping in Ethiopia
In 1984, Claire Bertschinger was working as a nurse for the ICRC in Mekele, Ethiopia. This was during a terrible famine. She ran a feeding center, but it could only help 60 to 70 new children at a time. Thousands more desperately needed food. As a young nurse, she had to make incredibly difficult choices about who would receive food. Those she couldn't help had very little chance of surviving. She felt immense pain having to make such difficult choices, feeling like she was deciding who would live and who would not.
When a BBC News team arrived with reporter Michael Buerk, Claire was happy to tell her story. She wanted to show the world how bad the situation was. Michael Buerk's news report, shown on October 23, 1984, inspired Bob Geldof to create Band Aid. This led to Live Aid in 1985, which was the biggest relief program ever organized. It raised over £150 million and is believed to have saved about 2 million lives in Africa.
In 2004, Claire Bertschinger went back to Ethiopia with Michael Buerk. They wanted to see how things had changed 20 years later for a TV program. After that visit, Claire said, "Education is the key to the future for places with few resources. It opens doors and greatly improves people's health, especially for women."
Awards and Recognition
- 1986: Bish Medal from the Scientific Exploration Society
- 1991: Florence Nightingale Medal from the International Committee of the Red Cross
- 2005: Women of the Year, Window to the World Award
- 2007: Human Rights and Nursing Awards from the International Centre for Nursing Ethics
- 2008: Honorary degree of Doctor of Social Sciences, Brunel University
- 2010: Voted one of the Top 20 Most Influential People in the Nursing Field by Masters in Nursing Online
- 2010: Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2010 New Year Honours
- 2010: Honorary degree of Doctor of Education, Robert Gordon University
- 2010: Honorary degree of Doctor of Health Sciences, Anglia Ruskin University
- 2011: Honorary degree of Doctor of Staffordshire University
- 2011: Honorary degree of Doctor of Science, De Montfort University
- 2012: Voted one of the Five formidable women who shaped the Red Cross by the British Red Cross
- 2012: Voted one of The 10 most influential female nurses of all time by Scrubs Magazine
- 2012: Deputy Lieutenant of Hertfordshire
- 2013: BBC's 100 women
See also
In Spanish: Claire Bertschinger para niños
