A SCOTS doctor has told of the difficulties his charity faces in combating problems caused by shamans, snakes and abject poverty.

Dr Gavin McColl’s Glasgow charity directly helped nearly 8000 Zambians last year by sending doctors from the UK into remote rural villages to run treatment clinics, health education classes and train local community health volunteers.

On Call Africa has used a £50,000 grant from the UK Government’s Small Charities Challenge Fund to help finance its work and now McColl is encouraging other Scottish charities to take advantage of the fund before the November 28 deadline for applications.

The 37-year-old said: “It helps small charities like us to really make a difference tackling poverty in developing nations around the world.

“I’ve just become a dad in the last year and I’ve always said that I want to get my little boy out to Zambia very early, so that he understands there is a whole world far removed from what he’s lucky enough to have around him. It is cliched but why should where you are born dictate your prospects in life?”

There is only one doctor for every 16,000 people in Zambia, compared with 600 in the UK for the same number of patients. The African nation is also reeling from an HIV epidemic, with 12.5% of the population infected.

McColl helped found On Call Africa a decade ago with doctor pals Kirsty Luescher and Simon Tolmie and international development specialist Malcolm Spence. The charity has helped more than 35,000 people in the subsequent 10 years.

McColl said malnutrition caused by poverty was the “most heartbreaking thing,” but added that snake bites were also an issue with more than 32,000 dying from snake venom in sub-Saharan Africa annually.

“There is a serious lack of snake anti-venom in Zambia and, with the nearest hospital often six hours away, people needlessly die,” he said. “One of our community workers lost a child that way recently.”

McColl said the charity was also working hard through health education to confront beliefs that are harmful to people’s health.

“It was a real moment of kudos five or six years ago when the traditional faith healer started attending our clinic,” he said.

“The traditional healers unintentionally cause additional problems for individuals by doing things like rubbing charcoal into small cuts as a remedy for back pain.

“Witch doctors can do more harm and cause community division by blaming ill-health on someone putting a curse on someone else."

The Scot added that sexual cleansing had been a major issue. “Many people believed that you could be cleansed of HIV by having sex with a virgin,” he said. “A lot of work is going in to getting society away from that sort of health belief model to a germ theory model.

“You have to build relationships to slowly change those belief systems. You’ve got to consider that it’s not that long ago you had Western doctors extolling the benefits of tobacco, so we shouldn’t be smug.”

International Development Minister Baroness Sugg said: “The UK Government’s Small Charities Challenge Fund exists to make sure small organisations, which do vital work around the world, get the crucial support they need to help us end poverty once and for all.

“UK aid has helped On Call Africa to scale up their work providing healthcare in hard-to-reach rural areas in Zambia.

“We are encouraging small charities from every corner of Britain to apply for an SCCF grant to help them make a difference.”