Seventeen-year-old Nadia Clarke talks about her African experience.

Last summer I got the chance to spend a month helping out in a hospital in Africa. I had one year left at school, and I was interested in studying medicine at university. I thought it was the perfect chance to get some experience and to see if I really wanted to be a doctor.

It was a month that changed my life. I was introduced to a world that is very different to mine in so many ways. I was horrified at how poor so many of the families over there are and how difficult their lives can be. But I was also amazed at how positively people go about their everyday lives. The way they come together and help each other is a real inspiration, and something I think a lot of us here in the UK have forgotten. I think many of us don’t realise how lucky we are.

My work in the hospital was hard. I spent a lot of time cleaning floors and changing bed sheets, but I also got to spend some time looking after the patients. And I got the chance to talk to some doctors and ask them about the profession. I saw some truly awful things in the hospital, but none of them changed my mind about being a doctor. In fact, they only made me more determined to do medicine!

When I finish, I know exactly what I’m going to do: I want to work for an international organisation like the Red Cross or Médecins sans Frontières and spend my life helping people overseas who haven’t been as lucky in life as me. I can’t wait to get started.