Four Australians who've served on the front line of disease control, disaster relief and healthcare in some of the most war-torn and remote out reaches of the planet have been awarded the highest international honour for a nurse.
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Victorian nurse and midwife Nola Henry is among the Australian Red Cross aid workers who were honoured by Governor-General Peter Cosgrove with the Florence Nightingale Medal at Government House on Tuesday.
Ms Henry worked with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to provide emergency care to people wounded in armed combat in civil war-ravaged South Sudan.
The humanitarian worker has been nursing for more than three decades and has served in 12 missions, a world away from her home town of Glengarry, two hours south-east of Melbourne.
One of the newest countries in the world, Ms Henry said Sudan is also one of the most troubled.
"Our role in the health team was to be a part of a mobile surgical unit which goes out to where some of the people who are injured in the conflict happen to be," she said.
"The Sudanese people are very welcoming, they reach out and offer help however they can whether they're trained medical staff or not."
Ms Henry was full of praise for her Sudanese co-workers, who would never fail to turn up for work even when they were afraid for their own family's safety.
"Of all of the things we have control over, the country that we're born in is not one of them. You realise early in this type of work that we do that people just find themselves in this situation, they don't have a choice," she said.
"The instability has interrupted everything. People can no longer continue their education, they can't get their basic healthcare, they can't grow their own crops, so they're just relying on the international community to support them in the best ways that they can."
Fellow award recipient Kerry Page also served with the ICRC as part of a mobile surgical team.
Another honouree, Amanda McClelland, is a senior health adviser who led the Red Cross response to the Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone.
Red Cross Red Crescent Movement advocate Libby Bowell was recognised for her work responding to cholera outbreaks in South Sudan and Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines.
She also helped to contain the spread of Ebola in Liberia and saved lives after the massive Nepal earthquake this year.
