It's caring without frontiers as Henry battles to save lives

Published on Thursday 26 November 2009 08:24

IT WAS three years ago that Henry Gray first watched a child die. A volunteer for the medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières, he was in a dilapidated hospital in the Republic of Congo, where he'd come seeking adventure away from his "safe" life in Edinburgh.

However, he got more than he bargained for as his team could not save the sick boy and he was forced to watch him breathe his last.

"The first kid I saw die, that was grim. I will always remember that," the 35-year-old says. "We had a nurse from the Ivory Coast and he just came up and took me on one side and said: 'There's nothing you could have done, don't think about that'."

Henry, who has just returned from the Philippines where he was helping flood victims after September's tropical storm, is not a nurse or a doctor – he's a water engineer. Neither is he a full-time charity worker – he fits his life-saving trips in between his work as a water contractor in the city. This weekend he leaves for Zimbabwe to work on a cholera prevention programme.

But in far-flung places ravaged by war, natural disasters and disease, his hands-on skills are as crucial as those of any of medical staff – a fact starkly demonstrated on that first trip to the Congo.

He first arrived in 2006: "It was a lot worse than I anticipated. There was no water, no electricity, there were hundreds of patients, and they were four to a bed in the paediatric hospital."

War's legacy was all around: "We found a booby-trapped land mine in the septic tank. Walking to the river you had to be careful only to walk where other people had walked – it was like walking across the Meadows and having to stick to the paths because if you step off it you'll step on a mine, and that will be goodbye."

Despite the dangers, Henry set up a water treatment plant at the riverside, providing clean water for the hospital, and helped build an electrical system, but fuel shortages meant neither could be operated around-the-clock: "I'd get there for 7am and the generators would go on until maybe 5pm. We had to ration the fuel as it was so difficult to get anything. It was 100km to get to the nearest fuel, and three or four days by truck to the nearest town."

So, if there was an emergency when the power and water were off, he would be part of the quick response team, just as he was when he saw the young boy die: "We were trying to get the water running and power running, it was a massive panic to get things going, but the boy died."

His horror at what had happened was only slightly eased by the Ivory Coast nurse's kind words: "He said: 'Don't think, we could have got up five minutes earlier and got the power on, it would have happened anyway.'

"It would have been malaria plus something else that he died of – for the under-fives the mortality was off the scale. After the first one it does get a little easier."

Despite the grief, there was joy in overcoming the challenges of life in the field: "It was the little victories that made it all worthwhile. The day the power went on for the first time was one of the best days of my professional life, probably my life as a whole. And the water, as well. It's on such a small scale, but little victories were the things that really helped."

It's a far cry from Henry's first job after graduating from Aberdeen University in biology and environmental chemistry. A friend told him there was easy money to be made in the City of London, and he headed south to pay off student loans as an investment banker.

Only a year in, however, he decided this was not making him happy, and took a masters in water engineering, followed by two years working in South Africa. He returned to Edinburgh to settle down, but realised he wasn't ready for a pipe and slippers: "I got a flat and a girlfriend. But I bumped into a friend in 2006 who said: 'Guess where I'm going? I'm going to Congo.' I was bored with the flat and I'd lost the girlfriend and thought, 'that's not a bad idea'."

His move was not particularly born out of altruism, he adds: "Professionally it was going to be more difficult than anything I'd ever done before. The buck stopped with you. You do it because it's difficult. I get a bit – not bored – Edinburgh's a brilliant city, but it's very safe. I was driving to Livingston every day for work, I was thinking, I could do this when I'm 50, I don't need to do it in my early thirties."

Nonetheless, his trips overseas are punctuated with spells as a contractor back home. One drawer in his Fountainbridge flat is permanently stocked with the things he needs to pack should MSF call.

Switching between the two lives becomes easier the longer it goes on, he says: "It gets less difficult. I was quite down when I came back from my first mission. I thought, 'what the hell am I doing here? I could be doing something useful.' You have the initial stage of getting back, seeing your friends, heading to George Street and then you realise the delights of the Opal Lounge are limited and you think, I'd love to be out in the field. You get quite down, then I was really lucky, I got a call saying: 'Will you go back out for an Ebola outbreak?'" That might not be everyone's idea of good luck, especially when he describes the "body management" which was part of his remit, and included working with "body bags and people leaking". But despite the gruesome toll of the deadly disease, Henry could not resist the job offer: "The thing with Ebola is that it is really challenging, because you have to be absolutely right with all your procedures because it's so dangerous, but when I got the call to go and do it I thought, 'I'm back to normal in Edinburgh' and it injects a bit of , well, it's exciting – there's rarely a dull moment."

Since then he has worked in Brazil, as well as the last trip to the Philippines. Demonstrating how the simplest of sanitation measures can prevent disease, Henry visited evacuation centres, delivering basic toilet cleaning equipment, and helped to distribute packs of simple items such as soap, towels, cutlery and toothpaste.

He's not sure what he'll be doing in Zimbabwe, despite the fact he leaves in just two days.

Not only does MSF change the lives of those it helps, it has been the making of him, Henry says. "It's just a great organisation to work for, it does what it says on the tin. I tried to think what I would be doing if I hadn't stumbled across them, because I don't think I would be comfortable with just living in Edinburgh. I might have found a nicer flat, but I wouldn't trade that for sure."

NO LIMITS ON AIDING THE NEEDY

MDECINS Sans Frontires, or Doctors Without Borders, was founded in 1971 by a small group of French medics who worked in the Biafran war during the late 1960s.

They proclaimed it the world's first independent, non-governmental organisation specialising in emergency medical assistance.

MSF now works in more than 60 countries, delivering aid to those affected by armed conflict, epidemics and natural and man-made disasters. It also provides assistance to those without access to proper healthcare, such as street children.

Every year 3,000 specialists travel to disaster zones to work alongside more than 25,000 local staff. The specialists include doctors, nurses, water and sanitation experts, and administrators. Their tasks include emergency healthcare, vaccination, setting up feeding centres and providing psychological support.