Mrs Ann Kerr

At a Moments Notice: One Nurse's Story Mrs Ann Kerr

Publisher Marketing: Carol Brunello, Ann Kerr, At A Moments Notice, One Nurse's Story, Biography. As a mother of teenage children and enjoying her nursing career, Ann's life changed in 1977 over drinks at a cocktail party. She had a chance meeting with a doctor who had returned from famine relief in Ethiopia and was told that as well as her nursing experience, all she needed was a good sense of humour. Having decided that the direction of her nursing skills would change, she was accepted into a medical team. Her earlier missions were with feeding programmes in Somalia and Cameroon, supported by Oxfam, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) and the Overseas Development Association (ODA). Her first of many missions with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was to Peshawar in Pakistan in 1983. Over the next 22 years she worked with the ICRC in Thailand, Afghanistan, Rwanda, Chechnya, East Timor, Kenya and Southern Sudan and also in ICRC's head office in Geneva and with the British Red Cross in London. She carried her skills, smile and amazing sense of humour to war zones where children and adults were in dire need due to starvation, disease, displacement and life changing hideous injuries. Witnessing distressing sights, often in personal danger, she never turned down a request to travel to places unknown. Between missions she nursed in hospitals and incongruously did a beauty therapy course, 'as a change of direction'. In the field, witnessing human suffering which many could not envisage, she met each challenge with humanity, humility and hope. Conditions were far from ideal but with her strength and big heart she faced each day with a positive attitude, never accepting "that's good enough" but striving always to ease and improve conditions and to train national staff to a good standard. Her story starts with her childhood which, due to World War II, had a strong influence on her decision making later in life. A 'Florence Nightingale' of recent times, the esteemed awards she received for her services to nursing were well deserved.