A 17-year-old Altrincham schoolboy has helped to deliver a baby during a self-funded trip to Uganda.
Rory McNicholas, a pupil at St Ambrose College in Hale Barns, said his experiences during a working trip to a poverty-stricken, rural part of the East African country were “life-changing”.
Rory, who travelled on a “shoestring” budget with the charity Medcare, said: “Standing in this ramshackle clinic in the Ugandan outback holding a baby just five minutes after the birth confirmed that this was something I wanted to do for the rest of my life. It was a magical experience.”
He added: “It was a life changing trip. I’d go back again in a heartbeat to help and learn more whenever I can. It was a privilege to work alongside so many many wonderful people doing their best in poor conditions to help the local people, not just the doctors and there aren’t many because to train out there is so expensive, but the medical officers, those working in the orphanages, all the staff, all the team.”
Rory, the son of an orthopaedic surgeon and a nurse, is hoping to go to Oxford or Cambridge next year to read medicine.
“The poverty was simply jaw dropping and the problems they face on a daily, hourly basis are something we cannot imagine. I worked with this woman, or rather I should say latter-day saint, called Mary who had set up from scratch this special school that now has 140 children, the majority with disabilities, many orphaned or simply abandoned by their families.”
Rory raised £500 to fund his trip and is now continuing to raise money to help the friends he left behind.
Pauline Ridgway, Head of Sixth Form at St Ambrose College, said: “We are very proud of Rory. He very much represents what we want our pupils to go out and achieve. Hard-working, talented but selfless and always prepared to put the needs of others first.”
