Remembering Nancy Malloy

There are average people all over the world, doing whatever they can to make lives better. As the saying goes, "and the world is better for them having lived." They don't have a PR campaign and don't do photo shoots very well. They don't mind getting dirty, enduring hardships the rest of us would complain about too easily. They don't mind suffering because at the end of the day, they know they made a difference. No matter how small it may seem to some, they changed someone's life and it was all worth it.

I was just sent a link to the story of a nurse killed while serving with the Red Cross out of Canada. Nancy Malloy was just such a person.

Remembering Nancy Malloy
Canada Museum of Health Care
by Museum of Health Care
Posted on December 16, 2011

Nancy worked with the Canadian Red Cross for nine years, completing missions in Ethiopia (1990), Kuwait (1991), Belgrade (1993), and Zaire (1995) before arriving in Chechnya in 1996. Acting as medical and hospital administrator on these missions, among other titles, Malloy played a key role in facilitating the provision of medical care in areas rife with warfare and violence.

With a freshly signed peace treaty between Russia and Chechnya, Chechnya remained fraught with tension after two years of warfare when Nancy Malloy arrived at the hospital at Novye Atagi, approximately twenty-five kilometers south of the capital of Grozny. Aid workers lived in an almost constant state of stress, as the political situation remained uncertain.

Early in the morning of 17 December 1996 a group of armed men entered the hospital compound at Novye Atagi and made their way into the sleeping quarters of the international workers, where they shot and killed six Red Cross workers and wounded a seventh before fleeing. Nancy Malloy of Canada, Ingeborg Foss and Gunnhild Myklebust of Norway, Sheryl Thayer of New Zealand, Fernanda Calado of Spain, and Hans Elkerbout of the Netherlands died. Christophe Hensch, of Switzerland, recovered from his wounds. The Red Cross withdrew its remaining international workers from the hospital shortly thereafter.
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