I’m a final year medical student who completed their elective last summer on the Vine Trust ship in Peru. I’ve had a few months to reflect on my trip and the experiences I had, and it’s safe to say that deciding to do my elective with the Vine Trust was one of the best decisions I could have made. 

I did my elective with two of my best friends who are also medical students. We arrived on the ship and were welcomed by the crew and introduced to Frank. Frank was amazing – he taught us Spanish, took us into the local villages when we docked up to explore, set up movies on the ship for us in the evenings and took lots of photos for us to remember the trip. He made us feel very safe during the expedition! The rest of crew were amazing too – the chef made sure everybody was well fed, Rosa (medical assistant) got us all singing karaoke in Spanish and had everybody laughing, one of the UK doctors was so lovely, reassuring and taught us lots and ensured we were practising safely, and Ronald (Peruvian doctor) was funny and very knowledgeable about local diseases.

As a medical student, completing my elective on the boat was such an amazing and unique experience in comparison to most other electives. The ship travels down the Amazon River and stops in different villages to allow locals to come aboard and attend clinics. You gain a lot of independence but have supervision when needed to ensure patient safety. Families often attended the clinic together as they hadn’t seen a healthcare professional for many months, maybe even years, which meant you were managing lots of different conditions at once and I personally really enjoyed this challenge. I saw some really interesting patients and diseases – lots of parasite infections, skin infections such as scabies (and saw how locals tried to treat this with nail polish to stop the itching and sap from trees), infants with nutritional deficiencies and anaemia, and locals with malaria and other tropical diseases. We also made a home-visit to a patient with end-stage AIDs who hadn’t been able to go to a hospital for treatment due to the remote nature of where they lived and lack of money to do so. Whilst our ability to treat every single condition was limited, as a team we did our best to improve these patient’s lives as best we could.

Overall, my favourite part of the trip was meeting the local Peruvian people as they were so welcoming and kind. When we would walk into the villages in the evening, the young kids would come over and ask to hold our hand and show us around their small community. Elders would bring fruit onto the boat as a gesture of their gratitude or cut coconuts from trees and give them to us. It was such a remote part of the world and yet I felt so safe. It was quiet and peaceful, and we spent lots of time outdoors watching the sun set or seeing the stars without any light pollution at night – which was absolutely breathtaking. It was such an honour to be a part of this expedition and I really hope to return someday in the future. 

- Rachel, medical student.