Coming home after months or years of volunteering abroad is a bigger adjustment than most people expect. You left Australia with a set of assumptions about daily life, and the experience changed them. Now you're back, and while the supermarkets are familiar and the...
For 15 years, Francisco lived with a slow-growing tumour on the right side of his jaw. As a farmer and cattle herder from Toliara in southern Madagascar, he carried the burden of his condition in every part of daily life. Sleeping was uncomfortable. Working became...
Thirty-one-year-old Aimee's face lights up when she speaks about her son. She is a young mother with a gentle smile, but behind that smile is a pain she carried quietly for nine years, tied to the very act of becoming a mother. “It started about a month after I had...
The global surgery gap remains one of the most urgent yet often overlooked challenges in modern healthcare. Across many low and middle income countries, access to essential surgical care is limited or entirely unavailable, leaving millions to suffer from treatable...
When Ifaliana was a baby, nothing seemed to soothe her when she started crying. Her mother, Nirina, remembers trying everything. “I breastfed her, but she kept crying,” she recalled. “Then I said to myself, ‘I will get some water.’” She placed her in a basin and the...
Mental health support on hospital ships is becoming an essential component of humanitarian healthcare, particularly for organisations such as Mercy Ships that operate in regions with limited access to medical services. While these floating hospitals are widely...