A FIELD WORKER STORY FROM YEMEN 2015

Theatre nurse Raewyn Turner (right) from New Zealand works with national medical staff. © Ton Koene

NAME: Raewyn Turner

FROM: Mt Maunganui, New Zealand

FIELD ROLE: Aug 2015 – Oct 2015

Having worked in Darfur, Afghanistan and Gaza, I had always felt safe under our Médecins Sans Frontières flag. Then Kunduz happened.

And then, later on, I was watching the news and saw that our hospital in Saa’da, Yemen had also been destroyed by airstrikes. I went cold. I had just returned from Saa’da where I had worked as an operating theatre nurse in a different hospital.

I thought about how important the destroyed hospital had been – they had stabilised a lot of wounded and brought them to us for surgery. I thought about the more than 200,000 people who would no longer have access to lifesaving medical care.