Tauranga nurse off to Afghanistan

Press, 10 February 1989, Page 14

Tauranga nurse off to Afghanistan

PA Tauranga As embassies clear Afghanistan a Tauranga nurse is heading there to teach first aid for the New Zealand Red Cross Society. Ms Margaret Wilson finished work for Tauranga Hospital Board last Friday and will join a New Plymouth nurse, Ms Phillippa Parker, this week in Wellington for a briefing. They will fly to Afghanistan on Saturday. Ms Wilson, aged 42, will work as a public health nurse in health clinics in Kabul, the capital, training Afghan Red Crescent members in first aid, primary health care and the treatment of minor diseases. Afghanistan prefers the non-religious international Red Cross organisation to be called Red Crescent so its Muslims do not misinterpret the cross as a Christian symbol.

Ms Parker will be head nurse of the Red Cross surgical hospital in Kabul. It is Ms Wilson’s fourth Red Cross mission since 1980 and she knows little about what to expect, but to pack ample warm clothing to cope with Afghanistan’s coldest winter in years. Until about six months ago there were no Western teams working in Afghanistan but now, along with International Red Cross, there was a French team, Medicine Sans Frontiers (doctors without borders), working there. Ms Parker said she was not put off by embassy warnings .to leave the country. It would be irresponsible for them to react otherwise, she said. All non-essential personnel, including embassy families and tourists, should be removed from a country when its immediate future was so unsure.