A TAVISTOCK nurse is about to swap her rural West Devon practice for a very different role in Africa, as she embarks on a new volunteer project being run in Kenya.

Emma Edwards, who is based at Tavyside Health Centre, leaves Devon for Africa on November 14, to spend two weeks working on a healthcare outreach programme at Makongeni.

Makongeni is a small village with virtually no medical services available to the 2,000 people living there.

In rural Kenya, around 70% of people are living below the poverty line, and access to proper healthcare can be limited or non-existent.

For the Makongeni villagers, travel to the nearest town for medical treatment is often too expensive, especially for larger families with young children.

Emma will be one of a group of some 25 volunteers who will be setting up medical health clinics in partnership with local health workers.

Emma said: 'We're mostly practice nurses and a couple of midwives, from all over the country.

'Gap year students have been out there for some time, digging wells and doing various building projects, but there are no health care facilities out there at all.

'We will be doing outreach work with them and trying to help them become more self supporting.'

Because this is the first formal healthcare project in the area, Emma said it was difficult to know exactly what the volunteers would be doing once they arrived.

'Because of the Somalian famine, more and more refugees are coming in to the area. We don't really know exactly what we will be doing, it's a case of finding out what the need is and trying to do what we can to help, but I think there will be a lot of worming, nutrition and family planning work.

'Everything we do here, we have the equipment for — it would be great to start a vaccination programme out there, but they have no vaccines — they actually have very little,' said Emma.

'We will need to work out the best way to help — and to educate them so they can help themselves afterwards.'

Emma said she was now beginning to really look forward to the trip.

'I was really nervous about it at first, but now I can't wait to go. Also, I've met some of the other girls now who will be going, which is great.

'I've never done anything like this — we didn't have gap years when I was younger — so I feel a real sense of adventure.'

The volunteers will be staying in tents which have been previously used by gap year students — complete with cold showers and creepy crawlies, which Emma is definitely not looking forward to!

The difference between comparatively affluent West Devon and Kenya, where people have so little, will also be hard.

Emma said sometimes, the NHS in England was taken for granted: 'People here have a really good health care system, which I think is sometimes not appreciated when you consider people over there have absolutely nothing and are they are so grateful for anything — their expectations are so different.

'Seeing the poverty out there is going to be really hard — hopefully we will be able to actually make a difference, although I am sure we will learn more from them than they can learn from us.'

Emma said she was very grateful to Tavyside Health Centre, which was allowing her paid leave to take part in the Kenyan healthcare programme. She was also grateful to her patients and colleagues for the interest they had shown in the scheme.

Emma has had to self-fund her trip and is also raising money for the project, which is run by Camps International.

Staff at Tavyside Health Centre are doing a sponsored walk this weekend to help boost the funds. The circular seven-mile walk takes place on Sunday October 16, from Peek Hill.

Anyone who would like to donate to the Makongeni health outreach programme should drop in to Tavyside Health Centre in Tavistock where there is a collection point.