Red Cross Director In Honduras

Press, Volume C, Issue 29671, 15 November 1961, Page 2

Red Cross Director In Honduras

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SUSAN VAUGHAN)

A slim, handsome and extremely capable woman in her fifties flew into Belize after the British Honduras capital had been wrecked hy hurricane *’Hattie.” She stood among the devastated buildings, read the grim lists of the dead, assessed the shortage of food and the risk of epidemic. Then she set about seeing that everything possible was being done to help.

Such consequences of disaster are nowiing new to Joan Whittington, overseas director of the British Bed Cross She is a familiar figure on the battlefields of war and peace. ’ In 1951 she toured bandit areas in Malaya to visit Bed Cross girls who were bringing food and medical aid to people in refugee villages. She ignored her own venture into danger and spoke only of the work of her girls. “They are doing a grand job,” she mid. “Even when with the forward units in Italy, I did not fed so alive to a sense of danger as one does here.” Later she popped up tn Kenya during the Mau Mau terrorist troubles. She

wanted to see that supplies of milk, cod liver oil and vitamin tablets were getting through to help remedy the grave nutritional problems caused by he destructon of crops. She helped to bring about a minor revolution in the domestic habits of many of the Kikuyu womenfolk, encouraging them— in the Red Cross spirit—to aid those less fortunate than themselves. Village Lecture She tells the story of a Red Cross worker who visited one of the Kikuyu villages to find a mother and child alone and dying of neglect in their dirty, cheerless hut. The worker gave medical dressings to a group of village women, together with a little lecture on how they should help the sick family. When she returned a week later the neighbours ran to meet her, calling proudly. “Come and see.” The hut had been thoroughly cleaned, the child was skipping outside and the mother was wefi on the way to recovery. Next time someone became ill, the neighbours would need no telling. The Kikuyu women still remember Joan Whittington and her workers. I have no doubt that the people of Belize will remember them for a long time, too.