Dr Charlotte Milne served as a Volunteer at PTK Hospital

Two ex-teachers of Solihull School, UK, Martin & Lindsay Broughs were holidaying in Sri Lanka in Nov 2017 and spent 8 days with us in the north and east. As part of this trip, we took them to Puthukudiyiruppu (PTK) base hospital. They realised the difficulties faced by the doctors due to lack of resources. On their return, they arranged a meeting with their son, who is a doctor in the UK and has volunteered in the past, to explore arranging volunteer doctors to PTK hospital. Although he was keen to go to Sri Lanka, he was unable to commit himself in 2018. However, he managed to arrange a doctor to volunteer at PTK hospital. Dr Charlotte Milne from the Northeast of England offered her services. Assist RR arranged her registration and arranged all other necessary logistics. Dr Milne, who used her own funds to purchase the air tickets, reached PTK on 24th April and provided her services till 7th July. She didn’t ask for air-conditioned room and stayed at the hospital quarters for the local doctors. She also happily ate the food given by a local family. She also learnt some basic Tamil to communicate with the patients. The feedback received from the hospital and Dr Milne was very positive. We are therefore still looking for volunteers to serve in Vanni. We hope Diaspora Tamil doctors will also be willing to go and spend a few months. Please kindly contact us, if there are doctors, who are happy to volunteer their services in the north and east of Sri Lanka. We would like to express our gratitude to Martin & Lindsay Broughs, and their son Richard for arranging the doctor, and Dr Charlotte Milne for volunteering in a remote area for 2.5 months. We very much appreciate their assistance and sincerely hope that we will find more volunteers.