Ellen Findlay had just returned to Pokhara from a rural health camp in western Nepal on New Years' Eve when she got a call from the British ambassador in Kathmandu. "Congratulations," the ambassador told her, "you have made it to the Queen's New Year's Honours List."

The 60-year-old Scottish nurse thought he was joking. But it was true: Ellen Findlay had just been made a Member of the British Empire (MBE) in recognition for more than three decades of selfless work in the Nepal. A midwife by training, Ellen first came to Nepal in 1970, treating everything from leprosy to maternity cases in and around Pokhara. Since 1994, she has been coordinator of the International Nepal Fellowship (INF) which organises mobile rural health clinics throughout western Nepal.

Ellen says she has seen great improvements in Nepal's urban health care system, but rural health care is still too thinly spread. In remote districts like Baitadi and Mugu, patients walk for a week or more to seek medical help, usually for infections and gynaecological problems.

There has been a slight decrease in patients visiting these camps after the insurgency accelerated in western Nepal, but there are still a lot of sick people. The insurgency hasn't affected Ellen's work, although there was a firefight close to a gynaecological camp in Baitadi last year. "But the patients stood in line through it all, some waiting up to 12 hours for their turn," she recalls.

"The thing that keeps me going is the extraordinary strength of the Nepali people to smile even through the most difficult situations," she says. "There is tremendous sense of personal fulfillment, and now it is great to see the work I enjoy doing being honoured." Looks like someone who belongs in our honour list too.