…Great progress has been achieved in recent years in developing international partnerships between the NHS, NGOs and low and middle income countries. As a result, we are seeing gains in terms of service innovation, leadership development and international standing, as well as improved health for our global partners. The challenge now is to fully realise these benefits by accelerating efforts to professionalise the scale, quality and organisation of these programmes. 

Overseas volunteering from the NHS needs to continue to become more professional and more ambitious: to move from a plethora of schemes to a movement.

These are some of the concluding statements from Improving Health at Home and Abroad, a report into how overseas volunteering efforts by NHS health workers are beneficial to individuals, other nations, the UK and international aid efforts, how they help to forge lasting partnerships, and how this process can be improved. The report was launched in Parliament on 11th July by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Global Health, and was written by the Manchester Academic Health Science Centre. HCRI’s Deputy Director Professor Tony Redmond OBE was one of the contributors.

The report is available in two forms:

•  Improving Health at Home and Abroad – Executive Summary
•  Improving Health at Home and Abroad – Final Report

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