The Vine Trust aims to encourage health professionals to use part of their annual leave and for a short time use their skills to help the poor of this Amazonian region.

We send medical teams go out to work on the Amazon Hope 1 and 2 throughout the year. The ships act as floating health centres providing basic health and dental care to the people of rural communities on the Amazon and its tributaries. Each trip lasts two weeks; the team usually spends about nine days working on one of the ships assisting the project’s Peruvian medical personnel.

In 2012, we plan to send 22 teams to the project (two teams per month, except January and December). Medical teams are made up of 6-8 people. Normally each team consists of at least two doctors and one or two dentists; the balance of the team being made up of other health professionals.

Most team members comment that the whole experience of working on the Amazon Hope impacts positively on their professional development and also at a personal level. It is easy to read about poverty and see it on the television but it is a totally different matter to be working with the poor and seeing the consequences of such poverty.

Read more about the medical project.

Read more about becoming a volunteer on one of our medical ships.