A PIONEERING humanitarian who helped bring the Ethiopian famine to the world's attention in the 1980s has been made a dame in the New Year's Honours list.

Dr Claire Bertschinger, who lives in Sheering in the Epping Forest district, became known after appearing in a BBC new report presented by Michael Buerk in October 1984, which inspired Bob Geldof to launch the Band Aid appeal.

The nurse, who was working for the International Red Cross at the time, highlighted the plight of the 85,000 people were in the final stages of starvation.

At the age of 20, she was one of those responsible for making life-or-death decisions about who would be fed, and who was too ill to be saved.

Dr Bertschinger later worked in Afghanistan, Liberia, Kenya, Lebanon, Uganda, Sudan and Sierra Leone, and has received numerous awards including the Florence Nightingale Medal in 1991 and the Woman of the Year award in 2005.

In 2006, she visited Walthamstow School for Girls to talk about her experiences of working in disaster areas and war zones, and read excerpts from her autobiography, Moving Mountains.