Barnoldswick volunteer gives vital help to India leprosy charity (From Lancashire Telegraph)

Barnoldswick volunteer gives vital help to India leprosy charity

2:41pm Tuesday 24th January 2012 in Health

A VOLUNTEER has helped medics improve the lives of people with leprosy in a small community in India.

Janet Melville, 29, from Barnoldswick, travelled to the Anandwan settlement, to assist in operations on patients left deformed from the disease.

The former West Craven High pupil, who gave up her job as a geotechnical engineer to travel the world, volunteered for a small charity called Hands For Life which carries out free medical work once a year at the Maharogi Sewa Samit hospital, near Nagpur.

She spent a week working in the operating theatre helping surgeons, anaesthetists and nurses in the leprosy colony at Warora.

Janet said: “The trip was a very new experience for me as I have never been to India before or done any kind of medical work in the past.

“We worked for a week wearing hospital theatre blues for about 10 hours a day, assisting the scrub nurse, surgeons and patients as best we were able with a whole range of tasks, we had to learn on our feet.

“It was an extremely rewarding experience, seeing patients receive the most needed care and sometimes life-changing treatment, that without the team would have been unthinkable.

“I hope to go back to India later this year to carry out the same work and I am very much looking forward to this.” Her parents Rosemary and Tom, of Chapel Street, Barnoldswick, said she was inspired by her time as a care worker.

Rosemary said: “She has always been interested in medicine and she thinks she should have gone into it as a career.

“She is in Thailand now and is hoping to go to Australia. But she is hoping to team up with the charity again and go to India. She may also go to Sierra Leone.

“We have it soft here, unlike these places. She said some of the sights have been gruesome.”

To donate, write to Hands For Life, 33 Alton Road, Wilmslow, SK9 5DY.