A University of Otago academic made honorary chieftain of an African village plans to work with local leaders to improve residents' access to healthcare.
Geography lecturer Tony Binns is proposing to help the people of Kayima, in Sierra Leone, by upgrading their healthcare clinic, which employs a dispenser and nurses but no doctor.
Although the community has only about 2000 people, the clinic services up to 100,000 people from surrounding areas, some of them several hours' walk away.
Prof Binns has had ties with Kayima for 44 years.
He was given the titles Chief Manjawah of Sandor, meaning master farmer, and Sahr Kayima, ``first son of Kayima'', in 2014.
St Margaret's College hall of residence students recently presented him with more than $5000, the result of a nine-week fundraising challenge.
Prof Binns, who is a fellow of the college,
said he would discuss the clinic upgrade with village leaders before deciding exactly how the money would be spent.
He established a nursery in the village earlier this year, after raising $13,000 from his students, friends and the New Zealand Federation of Graduate Women.
He was also keen for a student from the Dunedin School of Medicine to be sent on placement to Kayima, and he planned to discuss the idea with his colleagues at the university.
The closest hospital to Kayima was about four hours by road, but the roads were in poor condition, and most people did not have transport.
Medicine was kept in a freezer at the clinic, and there was a particular demand for paracetamol, aspirin and vaccines.
The country was still recovering from the effects of the civil war, which ended in 2002, and the Ebola epidemic from 2014-16.