CCI are delighted to be featured in this month’s issue of the INMO WIN (World of Irish Nursing & Midwifery) Magazine.

CCI Voluntary CEO, Adi Roche, spoke to the INMO about the powerful contribution made by Irish nurses to the victims of Chernobyl over the last 35 years since the devastating accident.  Every project, programme and facility run by Chernobyl Children International has benefited directly from the direct involvement of Irish nurses and midwives.

After a year of a global pandemic and inspired by the harrowing experiences of the Liquidators of Chernobyl, Adi also paid homage to all the nurses and midwives working in the Irish health service.

In a tribute to the nurses and midwives, Adi said:

‘The most powerful, shocking and blindly inspiring images to emerge in the immediate aftermath of the 1986 Chernobyl explosion was the heroic first responders to the disaster, the ‘Liquidators’.  When the history of Covid19 is written and told many years from now, the most powerful, emotional and inspiring images that will stand out will be those of nurses on the frontline;

Nurses holding the weary and emaciated hands of patients in their hospital beds and comforting them as they would comfort their own fathers or mothers in moments of enormous compassion and humanity. Nurses along with doctors helping to prone patients on their hospital beds in a last desperate hope of improving their condition. Nurses treating the bodies of the patients who didn’t make it with such love and dignity; dressing them with kindness and tenderness as they prepared them to be handed over to grieving relatives.’

Adi expressed her heartfelt gratitude to all nurses and midwives working in the Irish health service, who have been at the coalface of the pandemic and shown such bravery and compassion.

Some of CCI volunteer nurses who have travelled to Belarus also spoke to WIN Magazine about their experience volunteering with CCI and how it had such a profound impact on their lives and their work in Ireland.

Nurses who have volunteered with CCI

Some of the nurses have been travelling to Belarus with CCI for over 15 years and have witnessed and contributed to the amazing transformation of Vesnova Children’s Mental Institution.  While CCI has come a long way in terms of the living conditions and care provided to the children, there’s still lots of work yet to do.  All volunteers are counting down the days until they can travel to Belarus again to continue and build on all the amazing work that has been achieved so far!