💙🇸🇱 SIERRA LEONE, DIABETES… AND WHY WE KEEP GOING BACK!!

Some places simply steal your heart — and Sierra Leone has completely stolen ours. ❤️

The warmth, humour, resilience, enormous smiles and laughter continually humble us. And through diabetes, we’ve met some truly wonderful people — those living with it and the colleagues caring for them — who have very quickly become dear friends and part of our Sierra Leone family. 🥰

Sadly, some of those lovely friends are no longer with us. And that really, really hurts. 😢💔

Not because diabetes can’t be treated, but because things we often take for granted — insulin, medication, dressings, good advice or simply getting to a clinic — can be completely out of reach.

After two incredible visits in 2024 and 2025, our slightly bonkers but very determined multidisciplinary UK team of diabetes healthcare professionals and communications experts, led by the brilliant Dr Veronica Sawicki 😇, will return with Help Madina this November.

And just in case anyone thinks these trips are a bit of an exotic jolly… they really aren’t holidays! 😉😂

Life and working conditions can be tough. It’s hot, humid and dusty — often 35°C+ — with little or no air-conditioning, regular power cuts and some seriously bumpy roads and tracks that give every suspension (and occasionally every vertebrae!) a thorough workout. 😅 Accommodation is simple and practical, and we quickly learn just how many comforts we take for granted at home.

But none of that is a complaint. Quite the opposite. We are incredibly grateful for the hospitality, kindness and generosity shown to us everywhere we go. ❤️ The conditions we experience for just a couple of weeks are everyday life for the wonderful people who live and work there — which only deepens our respect for everything they achieve.

Most importantly, we’ll once again work 'shoulder-to-shoulder' with Sierra Leone’s extraordinary diabetes and healthcare teams. 💪

We’re not there to tell anyone how to do their job — far from it. We work alongside them, learning from each other and sensitively sharing knowledge and expertise. We are constantly amazed by what they achieve with incredibly limited resources. Our role is simply to support them and help provide more of the tools and resources they deserve.

Thanks to your amazing generosity, over the last two years we’ve raised over £6,000 💙, helping to fund an additional diabetes nurse, training and education, medicines, dressings, essential supplies and specialist limb-saving footwear.

There have been tears, frustrations… and an awful lot of laughter too. 🤭❤️

But there is still so much more to do.

For many people, diabetes means impossible choices: food or insulin? Education or transport to a clinic? Some travel for days just to receive basic care.

So our fundraising will continue. 💙

Every donation helps Help Madina and its local partners provide essential medicines and insulin, train healthcare teams, educate communities, challenge dangerous myths and support people who simply cannot afford food or the journey to their clinic.

And this is a small charity where your money really does reach the people who need it. ❤️

So, if you can spare the price of a coffee, a bottle of wine, or that thing you 'definitely' didn’t need from Amazon… 😉 please consider sending it Sierra Leone’s way instead.

Because behind every donation is a real person.

A healthcare professional doing extraordinary things.

A family trying to keep someone they love healthy.

A friend we don’t want to lose. ❤️

To our wonderful Sierra Leone family: **we admire you, we learn from you, we love working alongside you — and we haven’t finished yet! 💙🇸🇱

Please donate if you can, share if you can’t — and help us keep improving the lives of people living with diabetes.

Every pound matters. Every person matters. 💙

With huge love and thanks,

Elaine Allerton, Helen Towers, Alex Prins-Mills, Evey Verdegaal & Lisa Kelly xxxxx

💙 Help Madina 🇸🇱