Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
An infant started fitting and bled to death in nurse and midwife Anne Carey’s arms the first time she donned her protective suit and entered an Ebola ward in Sierra Leone.
“While I found this confronting, I then came to realise his mother, sitting with us, had just lost all seven of her children and her husband to Ebola,” she said.
“It had taken her whole family… She felt like she had no reason to live.
“I realised right then I had no right to self-pity.”
That was her introduction to the deadly disease that went on to leave 900 children orphans just in Sierra Leone.
Ms Carey had provided health care in remote communities across Papua New Guinea, the Northern Territory and Western Australia.
She had worked in Sudan and Kenya as an Australian Red Cross aid worker.
Her experiences in Sierra Leone did not leave her traumatised, she told the 135 central Victorian schoolgirls in the audience at the Women Showing the Way forum in the Bendigo Town Hall.
Rather, it emphasised the need for the courage to show kindness.
“We are all capable of panic, but we seldom achieve anything worthwhile when we yield to fear,” she said.
Fear was what prevented countries such as Australia from coming to West Africa’s aid sooner, Ms Carey said, or welcoming health professionals home after they had assisted with the epidemic.
“When our children have nightmares we do not put in earplugs to stop their cries keeping us awake, we go to them and bring them comfort,” she said.
“While this was something of a nightmare, it was only one they would wake from with some help from the world.”
When she left Australia for Sierra Leone, Ms Carey said she and her husband were unsure they would ever see each other again.
“The important thing here is not that I would not have returned, but that I went with hope and courage to try and help people in a country where help was desperately needed.”
She implored her audience to make a difference through kindness.
“Have the courage to question fear,” she Ms Carey told the girls.
Her speech also called on those with the power to lead to do so with more kindness, whether it was in response to a health epidemic or managing staff in a health service.
“I am no longer willing to accept in silence 20 to 30 per cent of my colleagues being bullied in their workplaces,” Ms Carey said.
“We must not go on accepting workplaces that drive out the empathic and sensitive among us.”
Ms Carey was this year awarded Australian of the Year (Western Australia).