A HEREFORD nurse who has been working on the frontline during the coronavirus pandemic is now trying to help children and their families in Palestine who have been injured in recent attacks in the Middle East .

Mary-Clare McGivern, who went to Aylestone High School and Hereford Sixth Form College before training as a nurse in Leeds, has pledged to raise money by running one kilometre for every adult killed in Gaza, and two kilometres for every child.

On May 18, she said that would be at total of at least 259 kilometres, but a Israel-Gaza ceasefire was agreed later in the month after an 11-day military offensive in the Gaza Strip considered the worst violence in the region since 2014.

Miss McGivern wanted to raise funds for Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP), a charity working in Gaza to provide emergency and life saving care to those caught up in the attacks.

Inspired by a visit to the region and by her time spent working in the NHS during the pandemic, Miss McGivern said: “I have had enough of watching the news and feeling sad, angry, and helpless, so I’ve decided to do what I can.

"It won’t be enough, but something is better than nothing.

"As of March this year, there was only one hospital bed per 800 people.

"Gaza is just 41km long, and a maximum of 12km wide, and yet is home to over two million Palestinians who are being bombed relentlessly, and who have been starved of basic resources for decades.

"I know as the bombs fall my total will keep climbing-I will just have to keep running.”

Her older sister Madeleine, who has worked in Palestine and Israel as a Human Rights Monitor and visited Gaza on a number of occasions, set up an initiative called Children Across Borders.

The project is a website where people can send messages of support to the parents and grandparents of Gaza.

Madeleine, who also went to Aylestone and Hereford Sixth Form College and now has a two-year-old son, said: “I cannot imagine the pain parents in Palestine must be going through, knowing they cannot keep their children safe right now.

"I have seen pictures and videos from Gaza showing children injured or killed, but also kids proudly displaying their pet fishes that they managed to save from the rubble of their home, saying they want to become doctors to help people, and splashing in a tin bath surrounded by destruction but still laughing.

"We all have children we know and love in our lives - this website is a way of telling parents their children are in our thoughts."