Claire Bertschinger
by Radiyah Shakur
How does it feel to be in the center of disaster and
not have enough resources to save everyone? Well ask
Claire Bertschinger, who in 1985 worked for the International
Red Cross in Ethiopia during the height of its wide-spread
famine disaster.
 As a young girl, Claire knew that she wanted to be
a nurse and to work in Africa. It was while on a two
week vacation to see Europe and staying with her aunt
in Geneva that it was suggested Claire use her dual
citizenship and apply to the International Red Cross
based in Switzerland. Bertschinger went for the interview,
learned a few phrases of French, and found herself
placed in Lebanon one month later.
However, it was Claire’s work in Ethiopia that
received worldwide attention. Claire, a young nurse
at the time, was featured in Michael Buerk’s
BBC report on the region. Surrounded by 85,000 starving
people, Claire was responsible for choosing which children
were allowed in the feeding station, and which were
too ill to be saved. For Claire, however, all of the
children needed saving. Unknown to the nurse at the
time, that three minute interview with the BBC journalist
made an immense impression on viewers, and led to the
biggest relief effort the world had ever seen. It also
inspired singer Sir Bob Geldof to create the original
Band Aid single and Live Aid.
The trauma of what Claire experienced made her a recluse;
and she shut herself of to the media and the public
for twenty years. The burden of having to choose someone’s
fate, whether they would live or die, was too much
to handle. She comments in a July 2005 BBC interview
that she, "felt like a Nazi sending people to
the death camps… Why was it possible in this
time of plenty that some have food and some do not?
It is not right".
In 1991 Claire was awarded the prestigious Florence
Nightingale Medal for her outstanding work. In 1993
she returned to Ethiopia with Michael Buerk to film
a follow-up documentary entitled Ethiopia- a Journey
with Michael Buerk. It was on this trip that Claire
decided to share with the world her account of what
happened. In 2005 she wrote the book Moving Mountains;
and donated part of the proceeds to African Children’s
Educational Trust, a small British charity. In the
same year she was presented with the Woman of the Year
Window to the World Award for her dedication to her
work in difficult and demanding circumstances, and
opening the eyes of the world to various issues and
crises.
Claire Bertschinger is a registered nurse and has a
Masters Degree in Medical Anthropology. She has lived
and worked in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Ivory Coast, Kenya,
Panama, Sierra Leone, Switzerland, Indonesia, and Uganda,
among other places. Just as much today, as before,
she is interested in making poverty history. She now
lives in the UK and runs the Diploma in Tropical Nursing
at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
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