MMN Mar 2022 Mag - online - Flipbook - Page 22
educational and medical needs
met but it was the IDPs (Internally Displaced People) who were in
a much worse situation. Burning
villages, child-slave labour and
raping women was the normal
behaviour of the army. I went to
his home on my way back to Mae
Sot and he asked ‘How can we
help HOPE?’ This was a very easy
question to answer as the camp
hospitals were a perfect training
environment. So, I asked for permission to use their facilities to train
KDHW community health workers
to a higher level of competence.
Within weeks, we had a positive
answer and the training jumped
from two weeks to ten weeks.
trainers, but as a consultant in
Accident & Emergency, we had 20
junior doctors and ten registrars
rotating through the department
every year. Therefore, I was able
to recruit volunteer trainers from
NHS staff. It was always a condition that every person covered
their own costs, took one week
annual leave and were willing to live
inside a refugee camp. So many
doctors, dentists, nurses and
midwives
jumped
at
this
opportunity to ‘give a little back’
to a suffering people. There
was no shortage of volunteers
as it is such a wonderful, exciting and worthwhile thing to do.
It became obvious that what they
The next year it became 20 weeks lacked was supervised clinical
and the third year it became 26 practice by experienced ‘medics’,
weeks. All this required more which is the name given to the
FIRST MEDIC
TRAINING
PROGRAMME,
2002
