Inside Geneva’s Summer Profiles: Rachael Cummings in Gaza

Rachael Cummings / Save the Children

Rachael Cummings of Save the Children is Inside Geneva’s summer profile this week.

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“When I went into nursing, I also wanted to travel, so nursing gave me that opportunity. That was sort of an 18-year-old thinking, ‘Okay, I can use this to travel with’,” says Cummings.

Since taking her nursing skills to humanitarian work, she’s been all over the world.

“I think one of the things I’m most proud of is Save the Children’s role in the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone in 2014 and 2015. We were able to establish – literally build, together with our Sierra Leonean colleagues – an 80-bed Ebola hospital and everything that went with it.”

Now, she’s in Gaza, grappling with desperate shortages of aid.

“Nothing came in for months, and since mid-May the UN has only managed to bring in a trickle of humanitarian supplies. But in this context, people are being starved and are on the brink of famine. They’re absolutely desperate – some are jumping onto the trucks and pulling off the aid supplies. And I know I’d do the same,” she says.

Wherever she is, Cummings’s priority is always the children.

“We’re driven by humanity and the desire to alleviate the suffering of children, wherever they may be. It’s about giving them hope, because they’re living through the worst experiences imaginable, the most desperate of times, and of course, they’re entirely innocent. They’re children who have the right to a childhood.”

Join host Imogen Foulkes on Inside Geneva.

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