While the world grapples with the invisible Covid-19 virus, those on the frontline in New Zealand may soon be rewarded with a visible token of their sacrifice.
Central Hawke's Bay resident and Red Cross nurse Andrew Cameron is circulating a petition to award frontline health professionals the New Zealand Special Service Medal
for their work during the coronavirus pandemic.
Cameron is no stranger to working on the frontline himself, having spent 15 of his 44-year nursing career in the war zones of Iraq, South Sudan and Afghanistan. He is also
the recipient of the Florence Nightingale Medal, the Iraq Medal, the Order of Australia
Medal and the Afghanistan Medal. He says the idea of the petition came from colleague
and pilot Alan Ward from Whangārei, whose successful petition in 2017 for the issuance
of a New Zealand Humanitarian Overseas Service Medal was presented to and accepted by
the New Zealand Parliament.
Cameron believes our frontline health professionals are particularly deserving of the Special Service Medal he is proposing.
"We are in a war against this deadly virus and the people most at risk of contracting the
virus are health professionals such as nurses and doctors in intensive care units caring for
known cases, people reaching into the mouths of the public taking nasopharyngeal swabs
at drive-through clinics, triage nurses in emergency departments sorting the serious
presentations from the less serious, and the laboratory workers dealing with live virus."