Today, the 12th of May, is International Nurses Day – celebrated on the anniversary of Florence Nightingale’s birth. The theme for this year is Nurses: A Force for Change: Improving health systems’ resilience – which resonates very strongly with Interplast’s mission and values.

The many incredible nurses from Australia and New Zealand who volunteer their time and skills for Interplast, and of course the hundreds of passionate, hardworking nurses with whom we work alongside in our partner countries, are very much a driving force behind the success of our programs.

In the last financial year, Interplast sent 41 nurses on programs across the Asia Pacific region, some of them who volunteered their time on multiple programs. These nurses included those who have been volunteering for decades, those who were on their first program, and everything in between.

One of Interplast’s newest volunteer nurses is Cecilia Delgado, from Auckland in New Zealand. She participated in her first Interplast program in January this year, joining a surgical team to Lae, Papua New Guinea.

I had been wanting to do some volunteering work for quite some time and one of the consultants I used to work with (Interplast volunteer surgeon Zac Moaveni), was talking about one of his trips to the Solomon Islands and all the fantastic work the team got to do. I found it so fascinating so I asked him if he knew of any vacancies, and he suggested registering with Interplast, so I did”.

Fortuitously, at the same time, Interplast was searching for a suitable nurse to join the team to Lae, which was led by Dr Moaveni. The team already had a very experienced Interplast volunteer nurse, and this was a terrific opportunity to get someone new involved, and indeed more Kiwi volunteers! Cecilia was the perfect candidate.

“I couldn’t believe how fast it was” Cecilia says – “I guess it was meant to be!”.