Nurse who inspired Live Aid marks key milestone

Dame Claire's work in Ethiopia inspired the Live Aid concert series

A nurse is marking 40 years since the moment her work in Ethiopia became the inspiration for a worldwide musical fundraising drive.

Dame Claire Bertschinger, who lives in Crewkerne, Somerset, appeared in a BBC news report in 1985 while caring for starving children. It prompted musicians Bob Geldof, George Michael and Sting to record the charity single Do They Know It’s Christmas?.

The number one record was followed in 1985 by the Live Aid concerts at London’s Wembley Stadium and in the US, which raised more than £114m for famine relief.

But it was not until 20 years after the report first aired that Dame Claire realised the role she had played.

While working in Ethiopia, she was faced with "heartbreaking" choices, where she had to pick 70 children out of 1,000 and decide who would be offered food.

"It was a horrendous situation. People were starving, not just children. They were skin and bones," she said.

"They needed food and there was insufficient food to go around."

Dame Claire, who studied medical anthropology, said she had not been accepted to go abroad at first because she was "highly dyslexic".

"On the contrary, I think it helped because I'm very practical. I don't really get fazed by challenges in life," she said.

She joined the international committee of the Red Cross in the 1980s and spent a year in conflict war zones in Lebanon, before she was asked to go to Ethiopia.

"I'd never been to Africa before and I thought 'why not'. I'd no idea what was going to hit me, what I was going to find," she said.

For two days this month, a mobile museum which documented Live Aid opened in London

Dame Claire was sent to a feeding centre that had space for 500 children.

They gave children three meals a day, but Dame Claire said there were always thousands more who needed to be fed.

She said: "I thought, 'How are we going to choose? How are we going to do that?'.

"I'd walk up and down the rows and choose not the worst, but those with a spark. Because the worst ones were going to die within 24 to 48 hours.

"It was such a horrendous situation."

She said feeding 500 children three meals a day was "a lot of effort".

"It's so intensive you couldn't think of the bigger picture," she added.

'Breaks my heart'

One day, a film crew arrived at the gate to ask Dame Claire questions.

She said: "One question in particular I remember was, 'How does it make you feel having to choose who can come in and who doesn't?'

"I thought, 'What a stupid question'. I said, 'What do you expect? It breaks my heart'."

She added: "I couldn't get rid of them fast enough. I had no idea what effect that film would have around the world."

The BBC news report by Michael Buerke ended up inspiring famous musicians to come together to raise money for the famine relief.

Dame Claire Bertschinger helped starving children in Ethiopia in the 1980s

"A few weeks later I was told a plane would arrive," Dame Claire said.

"They opened the doors and it was full of food, sacks of food.

"I thought, 'Wow, this is amazing. We're saved."

Dame Claire said she had not known the part she had played in the fundraiser for 20 years, until the BBC asked if she would go back to Ethiopia to commemorate the anniversary.

"I felt it was my fault all these people had died. I didn't want to go back to Ethiopia, I thought I'd be hated," she said.

"To my tremendous surprise, I was welcomed with open arms.

"A lot had changed, there were new roads, schools, a hospital. I even met children who remembered me from the feeding centre and had gotten an education and become doctors and one was a lawyer."