A Darfield doctor is spending six months in West Africa helping to administer medicine.
Dr Martin Sics, of Dr Mellor and Partners, will be travelling to Sierra Leone in September to practise tropical medicine and treat ailments such as malaria, pneumonia and malnutrition.
Sierra Leone also has some of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world, with one in 100 mothers dying in childbirth.
Martin, 60, retired as a partner in the practice in October after 33 years and took a tropical medical course earlier this year. He and wife Alison spent a year in the nearby nation of Burkina Faso in 2011-12 doing similar work.
"We both enjoyed it so much," Martin said. "I had never done tropical medicine before and was working in the emergency department of the hospital in the capital Ouagadougou.
"There were only about ten doctors at the hospital serving a population of more than 300,000 and none at all in the emergency department, which was run by nurses, who taught me all about tropical medicine."
Martin said the practice and the on-site Averroes pharmacy had donated medical equipment to help in his work in Sierra Leone, such as respirators and battery-powered light bulbs - as there is only electricity for about two hours a day in the country.
Martin, who still practises at the surgery, leaves for Africa on September 2.
