International Year of the Nurse & Midwife: Barbara Walker

2 Sep 2020, 14:37

There won’t be too many Kiwi nurses (if any) who can say they have treated a patient bitten by a hippo – or had to treat hundreds of children dying from severe malnutrition.

Barbara Walker, best known these days for her role as lead chaplain at Hawke’s Bay Memorial Hospital, left New Zealand aged just 28 to nurse in some of the most dangerous political hot spots in  the world, helping some of the world’s poorest people.

And with that came treating conditions and traumas that would never be seen in a New Zealand hospital.

Barbara knew from early on that her life’s work would be helping people. By age 13 her heart was set on becoming a missionary nurse but, with dyslexia, the road to qualification was not always easy.

Determination won out and after qualifying as a nurse and then a midwife, her next 20 years were spent helping those most in need, as the missionary nurse she always knew she would be.

Her journey took her across the globe, including to Cambodia – working with refugees fleeing the Pol Pot regime; Vietnam – on a ship rescuing and caring for boat people trying to escape the North Vietnamese invasion of South Vietnam; and Somalia - providing health care to refugees in the war-torn countries that make up the Horn of Africa- working on the Afghan Pakistan border as a midwife for over five years.

Barbara saw horrific conditions and a great deal of death and severe illness. Often there were no doctors and few nurses to look after tens of thousands of people suffering from illness; conditions compounded by the lack of food and drinking water. But conversely, saving lives, bringing babies into the world, and supporting people at all of their life stages made it bearable and, at times, wonderful.

It was completely different to first-world nursing; treating illnesses and traumas that would never, or at most very rarely, be seen in a New Zealand hospital; among them hippo and crocodile bites, the full range of tropical diseases and parasites, cholera, anthrax and polio.

“We had babies come in with tetanus, because the midwives cut the cord with the same knife they use to cut the grass.”

But she would not change it, and encouraged people wanting to nurse, even if faced with challenges, to “go for it”.

“It might be a bit harder, but it is definitely possible. Do not let those challenges stop you.”

To prove dyslexia does not need to get in the way of academic achievement, Barbara went on to achieve a Masters in Medical Anthropology. In 1999 she was made a Fellow of the New Zealand College of Nurses.  Barbara was award the Queen Service Order in 2000 for her services to Nursing and Midwifery.