How the healing power of gentle touch is a hand up for communities

Meet three volunteers who are helping to provide therapeutic hand care in the community while also discovering the ‘stories behind the hand’

Irish Red Cross volunteers Brendan Murphy, Margaret Crean, and Laura Galvin, who are part of the Kanturk/Millstreet Red Cross group, provide therapeutic hand care to patients at community hospitals and day centres. Picture: Larry Cummins

FOR the bones of five years, Millstreet-based Brendan Murphy looked after his late wife Kathleen — she had kidney issues and was on home dialysis.

“She was well able to look after herself but couldn’t make a hand of the machine. The hospital trained me to do it. There was a bit of work in it but I didn’t mind, we got on with it,” says Murphy, 82, who worked as an electrician.