News: Voluntary medical work

25 May 2009

A reader comments on the value of voluntary medical work in diverse parts of the world.

Reading the article by vascular surgeon Mr David Nott (January/ February) was valuable to me not only to rekindle ‘the reason I went into medicine’ but also to see what valuable work can be done even in minute quantities in such diverse parts of the world.

I personally have worked with three consultants who do very similar voluntary work in their fields in various parts of the world. One is a well-revered and experienced anaesthetist who anaesthetises for a few weeks a year on the mercy ships moored along the coast of west Africa and comes back enriched and invigorated.

The other two are a team of paediatric cardiac surgeons who each for two weeks out of the year take a team from their surgical teams as well as the PICU at the Evelina Children's Hospital, St Thomas', London where they are based.

One surgeon heads off to Sri Lanka and the other to Africa (not simultaneously obviously). They do work very, very hard in unimaginable conditions with poor equipment but the difference that they make to those lives treated as well as the families of those treated is immeasurable.

I shall, once I have passed my own final examinations in the FRCA, enrol myself with Médecins Sans Frontières and offer my services such as they are as an anaesthetist and see where my skills can be of help in the world. Kousik Dey

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