The All Party Parliamentary Group on Global Health have launched a report on overseas volunteering and partnerships from the NHS. The report, ‘Improving health at home and abroad: How overseas volunteering from the NHS benefits the UK and the world‘ addresses the role of NHS staff who volunteer overseas in advancing health globally and bringing new knowledge, skills and ideas back to the UK, and what can be done to facilitate this work further.
An “extraordinarily long list of benefits” from overseas volunteering was compiled during the review. These have been refined down to the four most compelling: health gains for developing countries, leadership development, innovation and international relationships. The report states that, “although often ‘under the radar’, overseas volunteering is already a valuable asset to the NHS, and could be contributing much more still.”
THET have responded to this by urging people to put the valuable work that volunteers do with health partnerships on the radar. Calling on those who have volunteered to raise the profile of their work in their Trust and in their locality – with their MP and the media by telling them about the benefits at home and abroad. They have produced a toolkit to facilitate this.
