Claire Bertschinger
Encyclopedia
Dame Claire Bertschinger DBE
is a Swiss
-British
nurse and activist in advocacy on behalf of the suffering people in the developing world.
on the Hertfordshire
/Essex
borders.
Dyslexic, she could barely read or write until she was 14. After her parents got a television
in the 1960s, one of the first films she watched was The Inn of the Sixth Happiness
starring Ingrid Bergman
playing the role of Gladys Aylward
, an English missionary to China
in the 1930s who is caught up in the Japanese invasion. Bertschinger thought: “I could do that. That’s what I want to do.”
After graduating with an MSc
degree in Medical Anthropology from Brunel University
in 1997, Bertschinger has an honorary DSocSci
degree from Brunel University in 2008.
, Papua New Guinea
and Sulawesi
.
After this experience, she joined the emergency disaster relief group of the International Committee of the Red Cross
(ICRC), allowed to attended war locations thanks to her dual-citizenship which would have excluded a British citizen. Through this she has worked in over a dozen countries including Afghanistan
, Kenya
, Lebanon
, Sudan
, Sierra Leone
, Ivory Coast and Liberia
.
She then returned to Switzerland and the head quarters of the ICRC in Geneva
as training officer in the Health Division, with the personal goal to learn French. She was also nurse on "Operation Drake," a round the world scientific expedition led by the British explorer John Blashford-Snell
.
Bertschinger then joined the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, where she is presently Course Director for the Diploma in Tropical Nursing.
Bertschinger is an ambassador the African Children's Educational Trust, and a voluntary worker in the UK for the charity Age Concern
.
, Ethiopia
during the famine
of 1984. She ran two feeding centres which could only take in 60 to 70 new children at a time whilst thousands more were in need of food. As a young nurse, she had to decide who would be the lucky enough to receive food; those she couldn't help had little hope of survival:
When a BBC News
crew appeared with reporter Michael Buerk
, Bertschinger willingly told her story to highlight the problems. While Buerk thought Bertschinger was a heroine and edited his report to highlight this, Bertschinger initially thought Buerk was an arrogant “prat” asking “stupid questions.” The subsequent news report filed by Buerk and broadcast on 23 October 1984, inspired the watching Bob Geldof
to launch Band Aid
. This was followed by Live Aid
in 1985, the biggest relief programme ever mounted, which raised more than £150m and saved an estimated 2m lives in Africa.
, answering the question brought about her conversion to Buddhism
.
In 2004, she returned to Ethiopia with Buerk, accompanied by Geldof and writer Richard Curtis
. As a result, she sought counselling, and was diagnosed with PTSD.
In 2005, she wrote about her experiences in the book, Moving Mountains, and the spiritual motivation which led her to Buddhism. Part of the money from the book went to African Children’s Educational Trust' A-CET, a British charity.
and Tina Turner
. In 2007 she received the Human Rights in Nursing Award from the International Centre for Human Rights and Nursing Ethics.
Bertschinger was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2010 New Year Honours for services to Nursing and to
International Humanitarian Aid.
Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...
is a Swiss
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
-British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
nurse and activist in advocacy on behalf of the suffering people in the developing world.
Biography
The daughter of a Swiss father and British mother, she was brought up in SheeringSheering
Sheering is a village in Essex, located on the outskirts of Harlow. It, along with the neighbouring village of Lower Sheering, forms the Civil Parish of Sheering, part of the Epping Forest District....
on the Hertfordshire
Hertfordshire
Hertfordshire is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East region of England. The county town is Hertford.The county is one of the Home Counties and lies inland, bordered by Greater London , Buckinghamshire , Bedfordshire , Cambridgeshire and...
/Essex
Essex
Essex is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East region of England, and one of the home counties. It is located to the northeast of Greater London. It borders with Cambridgeshire and Suffolk to the north, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent to the South and London to the south west...
borders.
Dyslexic, she could barely read or write until she was 14. After her parents got a television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
in the 1960s, one of the first films she watched was The Inn of the Sixth Happiness
The Inn of the Sixth Happiness
The Inn of the Sixth Happiness is a 1958 American 20th Century Fox film based on the true story of Gladys Aylward, a tenacious British maid, who became a missionary in China during the tumultuous years leading up to World War II...
starring Ingrid Bergman
Ingrid Bergman
Ingrid Bergman was a Swedish actress who starred in a variety of European and American films. She won three Academy Awards, two Emmy Awards, and the Tony Award for Best Actress. She is ranked as the fourth greatest female star of American cinema of all time by the American Film Institute...
playing the role of Gladys Aylward
Gladys Aylward
Gladys May Aylward was the evangelical Christian missionary to China whose story was told in the book The Small Woman by Alan Burgess, published in 1957...
, an English missionary to China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
in the 1930s who is caught up in the Japanese invasion. Bertschinger thought: “I could do that. That’s what I want to do.”
After graduating with an MSc
Master of Science
A Master of Science is a postgraduate academic master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The degree is typically studied for in the sciences including the social sciences.-Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay:...
degree in Medical Anthropology from Brunel University
Brunel University
Brunel University is a public research university located in Uxbridge, London, United Kingdom. The university is named after the Victorian engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel....
in 1997, Bertschinger has an honorary DSocSci
Doctor of Social Science
The Doctorate of Social Science is a higher qualification offered by select universities, which serves as a doctoral level qualification specifically relating to academic work in the field of social sciences....
degree from Brunel University in 2008.
Career
After training and working as a nurse in the U.K., Bertschinger became a medic for the Scientific Exploration Society expedition to PanamaPanama
Panama , officially the Republic of Panama , is the southernmost country of Central America. Situated on the isthmus connecting North and South America, it is bordered by Costa Rica to the northwest, Colombia to the southeast, the Caribbean Sea to the north and the Pacific Ocean to the south. The...
, Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea , officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is a country in Oceania, occupying the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and numerous offshore islands...
and Sulawesi
Sulawesi
Sulawesi is one of the four larger Sunda Islands of Indonesia and is situated between Borneo and the Maluku Islands. In Indonesia, only Sumatra, Borneo, and Papua are larger in territory, and only Java and Sumatra have larger Indonesian populations.- Etymology :The Portuguese were the first to...
.
After this experience, she joined the emergency disaster relief group of the International Committee of the Red Cross
International Committee of the Red Cross
The International Committee of the Red Cross is a private humanitarian institution based in Geneva, Switzerland. States parties to the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their Additional Protocols of 1977 and 2005, have given the ICRC a mandate to protect the victims of international and...
(ICRC), allowed to attended war locations thanks to her dual-citizenship which would have excluded a British citizen. Through this she has worked in over a dozen countries including Afghanistan
Afghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...
, Kenya
Kenya
Kenya , officially known as the Republic of Kenya, is a country in East Africa that lies on the equator, with the Indian Ocean to its south-east...
, Lebanon
Lebanon
Lebanon , officially the Republic of LebanonRepublic of Lebanon is the most common term used by Lebanese government agencies. The term Lebanese Republic, a literal translation of the official Arabic and French names that is not used in today's world. Arabic is the most common language spoken among...
, Sudan
Sudan
Sudan , officially the Republic of the Sudan , is a country in North Africa, sometimes considered part of the Middle East politically. It is bordered by Egypt to the north, the Red Sea to the northeast, Eritrea and Ethiopia to the east, South Sudan to the south, the Central African Republic to the...
, Sierra Leone
Sierra Leone
Sierra Leone , officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Guinea to the north and east, Liberia to the southeast, and the Atlantic Ocean to the west and southwest. Sierra Leone covers a total area of and has an estimated population between 5.4 and 6.4...
, Ivory Coast and Liberia
Liberia
Liberia , officially the Republic of Liberia, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Sierra Leone on the west, Guinea on the north and Côte d'Ivoire on the east. Liberia's coastline is composed of mostly mangrove forests while the more sparsely populated inland consists of forests that open...
.
She then returned to Switzerland and the head quarters of the ICRC in Geneva
Geneva
Geneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...
as training officer in the Health Division, with the personal goal to learn French. She was also nurse on "Operation Drake," a round the world scientific expedition led by the British explorer John Blashford-Snell
John Blashford-Snell
Colonel John Nicholas Blashford-Snell OBE is a former British Army officer, explorer and author.John Blashford-Snell was educated at Victoria College, Jersey and at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, then commissioned into the Royal Engineers.Amongst his expeditions have been the first descent...
.
Bertschinger then joined the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, where she is presently Course Director for the Diploma in Tropical Nursing.
Bertschinger is an ambassador the African Children's Educational Trust, and a voluntary worker in the UK for the charity Age Concern
Age Concern
Age Concern was the banner title used by a number of charitable organisations specifically concerned with the needs and interests of all older people based chiefly in the four countries of the United Kingdom....
.
Ethiopia
In 1984, Bertschinger was working as an ICRC field nurse located in Mekele, the capital of Tigray ProvinceTigray Province
Tigray was a province of Ethiopia. The Tigray Region superseded the province with the adoption of the new constitution in 1995. The province of Tigre merged with its neighboring provinces, including Semien, Tembien, Agame and the prominent Enderta province and towards the end of 19th century it...
, Ethiopia
Ethiopia
Ethiopia , officially known as the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. It is the second-most populous nation in Africa, with over 82 million inhabitants, and the tenth-largest by area, occupying 1,100,000 km2...
during the famine
Famine
A famine is a widespread scarcity of food, caused by several factors including crop failure, overpopulation, or government policies. This phenomenon is usually accompanied or followed by regional malnutrition, starvation, epidemic, and increased mortality. Every continent in the world has...
of 1984. She ran two feeding centres which could only take in 60 to 70 new children at a time whilst thousands more were in need of food. As a young nurse, she had to decide who would be the lucky enough to receive food; those she couldn't help had little hope of survival:
When a BBC News
BBC News
BBC News is the department of the British Broadcasting Corporation responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs. The department is the world's largest broadcast news organisation and generates about 120 hours of radio and television output each day, as well as online...
crew appeared with reporter Michael Buerk
Michael Buerk
Michael Duncan Buerk is a BBC journalist and newsreader, most famous for his reporting of the Ethiopian famine on 23 October 1984, which inspired the Band Aid charity record.-Early life:...
, Bertschinger willingly told her story to highlight the problems. While Buerk thought Bertschinger was a heroine and edited his report to highlight this, Bertschinger initially thought Buerk was an arrogant “prat” asking “stupid questions.” The subsequent news report filed by Buerk and broadcast on 23 October 1984, inspired the watching Bob Geldof
Bob Geldof
Robert Frederick Zenon "Bob" Geldof, KBE is an Irish singer, songwriter, author, occasional actor and political activist. He rose to prominence as the lead singer of the Irish rock band The Boomtown Rats in the late 1970s and early 1980s alongside the punk rock movement. The band had hits with his...
to launch Band Aid
Band Aid
Band Aid may refer to:* Band Aid , a musical ensemble raising money for famine relief* "Band Aid", a song on Pixie Lott's album Turn It Up* Band-Aid, a brand of adhesive bandage** Adhesive bandage, a genericised trademark...
. This was followed by Live Aid
Live Aid
Live Aid was a dual-venue concert that was held on 13 July 1985. The event was organized by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure to raise funds for relief of the ongoing Ethiopian famine. Billed as the "global jukebox", the event was held simultaneously in Wembley Stadium in London, England, United Kingdom ...
in 1985, the biggest relief programme ever mounted, which raised more than £150m and saved an estimated 2m lives in Africa.
After effects
The suffering she witnessed and the experience of living and working in war zones made her look for a philosophy of life which could answer her question of Why? Why should some people have plenty and others none? Raised a ChristianChristian
A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...
, answering the question brought about her conversion to Buddhism
Buddhism
Buddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha . The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th...
.
In 2004, she returned to Ethiopia with Buerk, accompanied by Geldof and writer Richard Curtis
Richard Curtis
Richard Whalley Anthony Curtis, CBE is a New Zealand-born British screenwriter, music producer, actor and film director, known primarily for romantic comedy films such as Four Weddings and a Funeral, Bridget Jones's Diary, Notting Hill, Love Actually and The Girl in the Café, as well as the hit...
. As a result, she sought counselling, and was diagnosed with PTSD.
In 2005, she wrote about her experiences in the book, Moving Mountains, and the spiritual motivation which led her to Buddhism. Part of the money from the book went to African Children’s Educational Trust' A-CET, a British charity.
Awards
Bertschinger has received a series of awards for her work, including the BISH medal from the Scientific Exploration Society in 1986, Florence Nightingale Medal in 1991, the Women of the Year Award 2005 Window to the World Award in a ceremony which also honoured Margaret ThatcherMargaret Thatcher
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990...
and Tina Turner
Tina Turner
Tina Turner is an American singer and actress whose career has spanned more than 50 years. She has won numerous awards and her achievements in the rock music genre have led many to call her the "Queen of Rock 'n' Roll".Turner started out her music career with husband Ike Turner as a member of the...
. In 2007 she received the Human Rights in Nursing Award from the International Centre for Human Rights and Nursing Ethics.
Bertschinger was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2010 New Year Honours for services to Nursing and to
International Humanitarian Aid.
External links
- Personal website
- Bio at the London School of Tropical Medicine
- Biography at the BBC
- Review of her book by The TimesThe TimesThe Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...