Staff from the Emergency Department of John Hunter Hospital will travel to the remote, low-lying island group of Kiribati on Monday to offer their expertise to its central hospital.
Eight specialist doctors, nurses and registrars have volunteered to conduct a six-day emergency training course in the nation's capital of South Tarawa. Their journey will involve multiple connecting flights to the Tarawa atoll, which lies more than 2000 kilometres north of Fiji.
Emergency specialist physician at John Hunter Hospital Dr Conrad Loten, who is leading the journey, said the group would be carrying training equipment with them.
"We need the CPR manikins, so everybody is taking a body in their bag," he said.
Dr Loten has been to South Tarawa once before and said common diseases related to its geography. It is one of the most densely populated islands in the world.
"They have a lot of diseases related to the crowding and they can't always have access to good ground water because of the high sea level. So there's a lot of diarrhea illnesses and bad asthma," he said.
Dr Loten said the six-day program aimed to "leave something behind".
"That is improved skills in acute situations," he said. "They have a reasonable number of doctors but are really lacking in supplies as well as training in critical care. They are quite good at dealing with the everyday things but emergencies are not so common, so that's where we are helping them."
