'The power of seven metre high waves had swept whole neighbourhoods into the sea'

Anna's work is about helping the most vulnerable people across the globe

As an aid worker who is regularly deployed to the most difficult parts of the world at a moment's notice, Anna Danniell knows how to prepare herself for all situations. However, last month she found herself at battling nerves after she was invited to Buckingham Palace.

“I find it much easier packing my bag to go out to a humanitarian crisis than deciding what to wear to Buckingham Palace to meet The King." Anna said.

“A career in the humanitarian sector had not really prepared me for a formal occasion like that. I spend a lot of time on deployment wearing my UK-Med fleece and big stompy, walking boots.

“The thing I was most nervous about was what to wear. My dad just said to me, ‘Well, I’ve got one suit, so I’m wearing that’ and I thought ‘How nice to have just one option and that’s it’. Job done."

In February, the 34-year-old was presented with a Humanitarian Medal by King Charles.

Brave Anna was awarded the honour in a ceremony at Buckingham Palace last month after being deployed through the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) to Libya after deadly flooding killed more than 11,000 people in September 2023.

Anna is a operations coordinator for frontline medical health charity UK-Med - responding to international crises, including war-torn Ukraine and the 2023 Turkey earthquake catastrophe.

“But it was really surreal and exciting to meet the King." She explained.

"I’m incredibly proud of the work UK-Med does as an organisation. It’s really nice for my work in Libya to be recognised, but these responses are always a massive team effort.”

The Humanitarian Medal is a new honour and Anna was nominated to be amongst the first recipients by the FCDO. She was scrambled to Libya in September 2023 to help provide medical support after Storm Daniel caused a devastating flood that saw 11,000 dead and a further 40,000 displaced.

Altogether, 1.2 million people were affected by the storm - 22 per cent of the country’s population.

Anna was deployed into Derna, one of the cities that bore the brunt of the storm. Two dams had collapsed and she was in a team that formed the UK’s humanitarian response to Storm Daniel.

“I’ll never forget driving into that city for the first time." She recalled. "To see the devastating impact with your own eyes made everyone in the car fall completely silent.

“There were trees that looked like they’d been literally just uprooted like garden weeds. There was this concrete flyover bridge and the edges of it were still in the ground but at crazy angles and the middle section of the structure was just gone.

“I saw a car sticking out the side of a building a fair bit off the ground. You were seeing smashed up cars that looked like old coke cans all twisted up and half buried in the mud.

“The sheer power of seven-metre waves coming down in the middle of the night into a city had swept whole neighbourhoods into the sea.”

The UK supported over 150,000 people with $5million of vital aid in the wake of Storm Daniel – providing 51 tonnes of core relief items such as hygiene kits, shelter materials, solar lanterns and water filters. Over 20,000 children were supported in the aftermath of the crisis.

The UK-Med emergency medical team deployment supported three polyclinics in the affected area – and the UK Government’s response ensured over 88,000 people had access to safe and effective medical treatment.

Anna added: “Thousands of people went missing when the floods hit and are now presumed dead. It’s difficult to imagine how hard that is for the people left behind.

“A patient who came into the clinic had lost one of her children in the flood and another one of her kids had been pulled unconscious from the floodwater.

“Amazingly, medics had been able to resuscitate her son, who was four or five, and he was just running around the clinic like nothing had happened. The mother was grieving her other child and dealing with losing her home.”

Anna admits her deployments can be tough for worried family and friends.

She admitted: “I am sure they do find it stressful. It was especially nice to take my dad with me to the Palace, as he possibly gets most worried.

“Everyone in my life is now quite used to me at fairly short notice sending a text saying ‘I don’t know if you’ve seen the news but I’m off to wherever. Back in a couple of weeks’.

“But I think everyone knows how passionate I am about the humanitarian work we do and are supportive, which makes a big difference for me. We live in such fragile times due to climate change and prolonged conflict, so they recognise this type of work is more important than ever.”

For Anna, feeling earthquake aftershocks or hearing explosions in war zones has been part of her job responding to humanitarian disasters around the world.

She explained: “The Turkey earthquake was probably one of the hardest ones for me. Over 55,000 people died and seeing the scale of the devastation with your own eyes was heart-breaking.

“The hospital we were essentially replacing didn’t look that damaged from the outside, but inside about five floors had caved in. Most buildings were reduced to rubble.

“We experienced quite a few aftershocks which were nowhere on the scale of the first one but were still pretty alarming.

“I was sleeping in a tent on my first night when I was woken by a powerful aftershock. It literally felt like someone had just grabbed me by the shoulder and was violently shaking me awake.

“I woke up super confused. When I realised there was no-one there I realised, ‘Oh, this must be an earthquake’ then wondered ‘What do I do now?’.

“Every five or six nights we got to enjoy a proper bed and shower facilities in a hotel, but experiencing an aftershock inside a building was much more frightening because you were terrified the building would collapse. I slept much better in my tent.”

Anna added: “I’ve been deployed a few times to Ukraine. I think anyone who spends any time there will get fairly used to the sound of air raid sirens and explosions.

“Most of the explosions are the Ukrainian air defence stopping Russian missiles, but they cannot stop them all.

“I was in Dnipro in January 2023 when there was a massive direct hit on a block of flats just a couple of kilometres away from where we were staying and about 60 people died. It was the loudest explosion I’ve ever heard.

“I was getting something out of my bag when I heard this deep, reverberating boom and just instinctively dropped to the floor. I could tell it was close. I could see the mushroom cloud of smoke from my window.

“The people of Ukraine are incredible, so resilient, but these sorts of incidents really take their toll on the people there. It was incredibly sad.

“For the rest of the day we were sitting in the basement in candlelight with no power or internet and just the sound of ambulance sirens breaking the silence. Nobody knew what might happen next.”

Speaking about the Anna's recognition, foreign secretary David Lammy said: “This new medal recognises the incredible dedication and selfless service of individuals on the frontline of the UK’s responses to some of the world’s most devastating crises.

“I am delighted the first tranche of awards will recognise members of the UK government’s emergency deployment teams, for their brave work in Libya, Morocco and Gaza.

“The International Search and Rescue team and Emergency Medical Team are made up of expert firefighters and medics from across the UK, who travel to the most challenging of environments to save lives.”