Bega surgeon AJ Collins is about to embark on his 15th trip as a volunteer with Mercy Ships.
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On July 29, the director of surgery at South East Regional Hospital will set sail for Senegal with the not-for-profit organisation that delivers state-of-the art surgery and other medical services to developing nations.
Dr Collins, associate professor of surgery at the Australian National University Medical School, heads Mercy Ships' thyroid clinic. He will be using his specialist skills to treat people with goitre and children with Graves disease.
A volunteer on the state-of-the-art hospital ships since 2007, this is AJ's 15th trip and the first since his February 2020 clinic in Senegal was cut short by COVID.
Considerable work occurs behind-the-scenes before AJ arrives in Dakar. Doctors and nurses compile a short list of 60 people in most need of his attention.
That is just "the tip of the iceberg", he said. When he was last in Senegal, 900 people registered for his clinic.
On his first day, he will examine, check and prioritise the 60 patients. Sometimes surgery is not the answer or the patients have an advanced cancer.
AJ typically operates on 40 to 50 people during his four-week period on the ship.
"It is my hardest working month of the year," he said.
He said there was always "a massive need" for Mercy Ships' services. The queue can run to 10 kilometres, with security guards keeping the crowd orderly.
Mercy Ships is funded entirely by donations. Much of the funding goes towards training local doctors and nurses.
"The best results for the dollars donated is to train local African nurses and doctors in hospitals in skills such as unblocking airways," AJ said.
"People just die because there is no-one to do those basic things for them."
AJ described himself as an average Australian country kid who ended up in a highly privileged role.
He volunteers for Mercy Ships because "I want to give something back".
"It is something that needs to be done, and they happen to need something that I do."
It was also stimulating and interesting.
"I feel like I have learnt more than I have given because it is an environment of such extreme-end disease," said AJ.
He sees cases that, if in Australia, would have been treated 20 years earlier.
It has also "afforded good memories and experiences that you can't get on a holiday".
Often the countries where Mercy Ships operate have been in war and have a United Nations peace-keeping force.
On one trip, AJ was playing for the hospital ship's football team against a team of Nepalese Gurkhas. Each week the teams played on asphalt, amid barbed wire, machine guns and sentry police.
