Two medically-trained Icelandic Red Cross volunteers will become the latest in a long line of Red Cross crisis workers from Iceland in Haiti when they set off this coming Monday.
Erla Svava Sigurdardottir, a nurse; and casualty (E.R) doctor Jon Magnus Kristinsson will spend several weeks working in the Finnish and German Red Cross hopital in Carrefour, a suburb of Port-au-Prince. They are the 26th and 27th people from the Icelandic Red Cross to visit Haiti since a devastating earthquake hit the country at the beginning of this year, Visir.is reports.
There are currently six other Red Cross volunteers from Iceland working in the earthquake zone – three of whom are expected to return home at the end of next week. Oddfridur Ragnheidur Thorisdottir and Kristjana Thorlaksdottir, both nurses, are already working at the Finnish and German hospital and will continue until the end of August.
In the hustle and bustle of our daily life, we tend to take for granted some of the exceptionally praiseworthy activities which go on around us. Such an activity is that of the Red Cross, the function of which bears witness to the innate kindness and altruism that is part and parcel of human nature, and which should bring to shame the hatred and the evil practices of the minority of people.