In its Circular No. 512, dated 20 November 1978, the International Committee of the Red Cross communicated to the National Societies the conditions under which applications for grants could be made in aid of their delegates or nurses who, in the course of their relief work during war operations or natural disasters, had suffered injury and had thereby found themselves in straitened circumstances or in reduced health (article 2 of the Regulations of the Maurice de Madre French Fund, adopted on 19 December 1974 by the ICRC Assembly).