Red Cross Blogs

Archive for the ‘UK’ Category

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It’s official – we are living longer than our ancestors.

On Saturday April 7 the World Health Organisation dedicated its annual World Health Day to issues caused by an ageing population. In the UK alone there are currently about three million people aged 80 or elderly – and by 2050 that number is set to climb to eight million. 

While a bright future of cakes and presents is obviously something to look forward to, an ageing population brings big challenges – particularly if everyone is to have access to quality health and social care.

The British Red Cross is already delivering the support that many more of us will need as life expectancy rises. Our social support makes a massive difference in communities across the UK – often to the lives of elderly people. Our volunteers pitch in with everything from wheelchair loans for people just out of hospital to a transport service that gets people out and about, and can also pick up shopping and prescriptions or offer a relaxing massage. And sometimes they make a big difference just by popping in for a cup of tea and a chat.

So how do we make a difference?

Tackling isolation and loneliness
Two million elderly people struggle to get to their local corner shop, post office or supermarket, according to research published last month. The Red Cross can help elderly people like Beryl, who lost her confidence after a nasty fall and stay in hospital, get out and about with its care in the home service. A volunteer helped her get back into her normal routine – Beryl said she didn’t know what she’d have done without the Red Cross.

Getting people back on their feet
Elderly people are more likely to need operations and hospital care. When Derrick came home to recover after surgery, the daunting task of looking after him proved tough for his wife Margaret. The Red Cross medical equipment service eased the pressure by lending Derrick a wheelchair, while Margaret was able to get “wonderful advice” and share her worries with a sympathetic volunteer.

Advice and practical support
Rachel found herself in desperate need of support after suffering years of domestic violence. Red Cross volunteers from the care in the home service helped her claim benefit payments she was entitled to, gave her a hand with day-to-day tasks like shopping and supplied some much-needed reassurance. The results were life changing.
While our ageing population brings challenges everyone should think about, British Red Cross services can help people be at their best regardless of how many candles were on their last birthday cake.

Don’t believe me? Ask the elderly people who were given a helping hand by the Red Cross – then decided to pass on the favour by becoming volunteers themselves.

Visit the Red Cross website for more information about the care in the home, medical equipment, therapeutic care and transport services.

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I was five when the Falklands War broke out, thirty years ago, on 2 April 1982. Although I didn’t understand the gravity of the situation, watching news reports of this distant conflict with my parents are among my earliest memories of world affairs.

Although it lasted only two months, the war cost more than 900 lives and left many service personnel on both sides with terrible injuries.

Our archives contain first-hand accounts of British Red Cross workers who were at the forefront of the humanitarian response, which included supporting wounded servicemen on the hospital ship SS Uganda and comforting anxious relatives at the Princess Alexandra hospital in Swindon.

Hospital ship SS Uganda

Officers from the Red Cross and St John Service Hospitals Welfare Department travelled 8,000 miles to join the converted hospital ship, SS Uganda, anchored in Falkland Sound. Barbara Townsend was among them. She later recalled:

“Most of our time was spent sitting and talking to the patients, writing letters, playing games and making soft toys. I might add that it was more by luck than judgement that a lot of toy penguin kits were taken along, and the patients with small children at home were delighted to be able to make a penguin and take it home for them.

“The bravery and spirit of all the patients impressed us greatly but I privately felt that once the euphoria had worn off, the reality of what had hit them would come very hard.

“Each patient was allowed a free radio telephone call, or telegram, and help was given by us in this direction by sending the telegram or taking the less mobile patients to the telephone.”

When wounded servicemen arrived back in the UK, Red Cross and St John Service Hospitals staff comforted and found overnight accommodation for anxious relatives who arrived at the RAF’s Princess Alexandra Hospital in Swindon.

Elizabeth Patten and Mary Richardson were among the British Red Cross welfare officers on duty at the hospital.

In an account of her experiences there, Mary wrote: “The numbers of relatives coming to meet the casualties have grown with each flight coming in. All in all we received 1,170 in the department…Many people came from as far afield as Scotland and all were very grateful for the reception of tea and biscuits that they received on arrival, as well as a sympathetic ear.

“Many of the burns cases were severe. The relatives were very brave though they were shocked and upset.”

Elizabeth Patten later received an MBE for her work in the hospital.

Red Cross messages

During the conflict, the Red Cross also helped people in the UK keep in touch with family members in the Falklands, through our tracing and message service. In total, 110 messages were relayed between our London office and our Overseas Branch in Port Stanley, via telex.

Delegates from the International Committee of the Red Cross were also active in helping the victims on both sides. This included reminding the warring parties of their obligations under the Geneva Conventions, visiting prisoners of war and inspecting British and Argentine hospital ships.

And after the war ended, the Red Cross transferred money to the Falkland Islands Branch, donated by members of the public, to help elderly people and families with young children who lost everything in the fighting.

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What would you do if you saw a man walking towards you with a severed arm hanging on by a thread of skin?

You might faint. You might run away. You might even think you’d accidentally wandered onto a zombie movie set. But Stephen Leonard, who’s had first aid training, stayed absolutely calm and used his knowledge to save the man’s life with seconds to spare.

The grisly incident started when retired firefighter Stuart Frain accidentally hacked through his own left arm while using a circular saw in his remote garden.

Showing superhuman resolve, Stuart – who is also first aid trained from his fire service days – calmly held his severed limb in place and went hundreds of yards to get help.

As blood poured from the massive wound, he refused to panic and instead carried on down a road and across a canal before spotting three passers-by – including his friend Stephen, who was walking his dog.

Calling on his training, Stephen stemmed the flow of blood by using a dog lead as a tourniquet. Seconds after it was in place, Stuart collapsed. Surgeons later said the father of four was probably only about 90 seconds away from death.

Now, I don’t want to be ghoulish but just play back that scene once more with no first aid training involved. I, for one, am far from confident that Stuart would still be smiling for photographers from his hospital bed. At every stage – Stuart’s initial calmness, his knowing to hold his limb in place, Stephen’s own steady resolve and precise treatment – the two men’s first aid skills made a critical difference.

People lead such busy lives these days, and learning first aid often feels like one of those things that gets put on the ‘to do’ list without ever actually getting done. But doing a basic course takes just a couple of hours – or you can even learn in the comfort of your own home using our Everyday First Aid online resource.

It really is time well spent. And I’m sure Stuart and Stephen would agree.

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March is Women’s History Month: a chance to celebrate the huge contribution women have made to society over the years. Women have played a central role in the British Red Cross right from its very beginnings. They have always outnumbered men in its ranks and often held highly influential positions.

Here are five inspiring ladies who represent the hundreds of thousands of women who have given their time, skills and passion to our humanitarian work. They include a pacifist and poet, an artist who swapped society portraits for the battlefield, a woman who falsified her age to serve in France and the nurse who inspired Live Aid.

 1. The lady with the lamp – Florence Nightingale

No account of women’s history within the Red Cross would be complete without Florence Nightingale. Best known for her work during the Crimean War, she also inspired Red Cross founder Henry Dunant. She went on to directly influence the setting up the British Red Cross in 1870. Hundreds of thousands of women have followed in Florence’s footsteps, becoming wartime nurses in conflicts across the world.

 2. Poet and pacifist – Vera Brittain

Poet and writer Vera Brittain was a Red Cross nurse during the First World War. In her most famous work, A Testament of Youth, she writes about her experiences as a nurse in the UK, Malta and France, where she was based at a military hospital near Étaples.

In one extract, she describes treating the victims of gas attacks: “…the hut was reserved for gassed cases, and I had once again the task of attending to the blinded eyes and scorched throats and blistered bodies which made the struggle for life such a half-hearted affair.”

Vera lost her brother, fiancé and closest friends in the war which, not surprisingly, turned her into a lifelong pacifist and anti-war campaigner.

 3. War artist – Doris Zinkeisen

Doris Zinkeisen was a well-known society artist in the 1940s. Having already volunteered as a V.A.D, she offered her services as a war artist in 1945 to the Joint War Organisation of the British Red Cross and the Order of St John (JWO). In April 1945, she visited Belsen concentration camp shortly after it was liberated.

Evelyn Bark, of the JWO, remembers seeing her at work: “She arrived in Belsen while I was there, and I watched her start a painting of the saddle-room.”

This painting became the chilling ‘Human Laundry’, now held by the Imperial War Museum (pictured, right). As shocking as any photograph, it shows emaciated, disease-riddled survivors being washed and disinfected by German nurses. The British Red Cross museum holds four of Doris’s other paintings, including ‘The Burning of Belsen’.

 4. Practical idealist – Lady Angela Limerick

Lady Angela Limerick joined the Red Cross during the First World War. Officially too young for overseas service, she falsified her age so she could nurse in France.

She rose through ranks and, at the outbreak of the Second World War, was President of London Branch. She also became Deputy Chairman of the JWO. In these roles, she led the British Red Cross response to the Blitz in London and travelled on missions to Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and America.

She was responsible for recovery work carried out by the Red Cross in Germany immediately after the

 war, and continued to play a central role with both the British Red Cross and the International Red Cross until the mid-1970s.

When asked what she thought was the chief quality in the ideal Red Cross worker, she replied: “Practical idealism. What we need is that subtle harmony between basic goodness and feasible reality. The mixture’s vital and the proportions critical. But it certainly isn’t impossible to achieve.”

This quality could well be used to describe Lady Limerick herself.

5. Live Aid nurse – Claire Bertschinger

Claire Bertschinger is the nurse who drew the world’s attention to Ethiopia’s devastating famine in 1984 – and inspired Bob Geldof to organise Live Aid. Michael Buerk, BBC reporter, interviewed Claire at a feeding station in Mekele, where she was working for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

In the report, she candidly described having to decide which children to admit to the centre, knowing that those she didn’t were likely to die. When asked how she felt, she replied: “What do you expect? It breaks my heart.”

In a letter to the British Red Cross, dated December 1984, she wrote: “They must think that I am like a god who, with a nod of the head, can decide if they are in or out. You see, I have to select 50-70 children from over 1,200 who are all under nourished and sick in one way or another. All screaming – or lying too still. The pressure is unbearable. Hell! What a job.”

Claire, who worked for the ICRC in a dozen different countries, was awarded the Florence Nightingale Medal in 1991 and a DBE in 2010.

Our fascinating museum and archives hold records of these women – including letters, diaries and photographs – and many more.

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Words can do a lot of things, but they’d struggle to describe the look on a Red Cross volunteer’s face when he returned from a weekend away to find his home completely transformed.

John Drudge was the happy victim of Channel 4’s You Deserve This House! programme, which gives surprise home makeovers to people who spend so much time helping others that they haven’t any left to put into their own homes.

How did they do it? John was tempted away for a weekend at a local country club, believing this was his treat for being a community hero – but it was all just a ruse to get him out of the way.

And when he arrived back home, the cameras were on hand to capture his gobsmacked reaction to a refurbished study, new-look rooms and – best of all – a hot tub in his garden so huge you could open it as a public pool and charge for entry.

John’s wife had told the programme makers that her husband – who’s a big guy – liked nothing more than relaxing with a whisky in his old tub after a long, cold night’s volunteering. So they found a new model that was so massive, it needed an enormous crane to lift it over his entire house before it could be fitted.

Needless to say, the hot tub has been a big hit.

John, from Godalming, is a fire and emergency support service (FESS) volunteer and spends hundreds of hours each year – day and night – helping those who’ve been caught up in a domestic fire.

Donna Taylor, from the Red Cross, put the 64-year-old forward for the television programme. She said: “John has spent so much time helping so many people, in so many different ways. He truly deserved this special treat.”

You Deserve This House will be screened on Channel 4 at 11am on Friday 16 March.

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