A new public medical school was opened in Aksum, Northern Ethiopia, in 2012, as part of a country-wide initiative to increase the number of doctors due to drastic shortages of doctors in the country.

For the last four years, Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry has been in partnership with the Faculty of Health Sciences, Aksum University, Ethiopia.

The purpose of this partnership has been to support the new medical school in Aksum. Since then, academics and clinicians have visited Aksum to run workshops on teaching and on clinical medicine.

The Referral Hospital is Aksum's new hospital that has been built for a couple of years now, however it is still lacking equipment and expertise to be fully functional.

The area has no ENT services and there have been requests for ENT doctors to go over to help them set up a service.

So this is where a colleague and I come into play - we are going to Aksum to help set up an ENT service!

We are aiming to hold taster clinics for a week in Jan 2017 at the referral hospital with a view to eventually return to help set up an ENT service that will serve 4 million people in the area.

We would be most grateful for any amount of donation (every little helps!) as this will contribute to buying essential equipment such as otoscopes, headlights, tongue depressors, basic ear instruments and ear drops antibiotics and ointments.