As a field trainee of Collaborating Centre for Oxford University and CUHK for Disaster and Medical Humanitarian Response (CCOUC), I spent the past week (21-25 June, 2019) with a diverse team of healthcare experts to conduct health needs assessment and intervention for Qiang ethnic minority rural community in Sichuan.

Our team designed an intervention programme on waste management, teaching the villagers harmful health effects of burning waste such as plastics and fertilizer containers. We also taught them the importance of waste separation and 4R principle for waste reduction. The other teams focused on disaster kit preparation, ORS production, NCD prevention and food safety. It was very rewarding when the villagers told us they understood the correct health practices after our intervention programme, which they were rarely educated on.

Huge thank you to the Head of Mission Professor Emily Chan, Professor Justin Wu, Professor Nelson Yeung and all trainers for putting together this meaningful programme. It was indeed an “intellectual outward bound” as Professor Chan described. “The hardest part is not developing technical skills, but cultivating the humanitarian spirit.” This concludes our first step into humanitarian work and it is only a beginning not an end.