A GP from Witney has spent the past 20 years making a profound difference to the lives of people in Uganda.

Dr Jan White, 61, has helped set up clinics across the country and treats some 10,000 people a year at her rural health centre.

It is a far cry from her work as a GP in the Windrush Health Centre, in Welch Way, in the 1980s. She now deals with a constant stream of people, including children, suffering from HIV/Aids, malaria and other serious infections.

Dr White returned to Witney last week to visit friends and family and took time out to speak to the Oxford Mail.

She said: “I think sometimes, when you see thousands of people dying at once or the same endless cycle of famine and floods, it almost becomes numbers.

“But it isn’t. Everyone’s got value, everybody’s got worth, everybody means something to a family, and just being able to help, even though you cannot help everybody, makes a difference.”

Dr White travelled to Uganda on a sabbatical in the 1980s and decided to stay on to help set up a medical centre in the capital Kampala. Since then she has helped set up other centres in Uganda and in neighbouring Kenya and now works at a hospice 22 miles from the nearest town.

The hospice, which opened in 2005, cares for people with terminal illness but also contains an antenatal centre to help children survive the first five years. Dr White said: “If you can keep African children alive until they are five years old, they stand a good chance of living until adulthood.”

Some 80 per cent of the country’s population still work as subsistence farmers, earning £1 a day.

Dr White said: “One of the biggest differences between Witney and Uganda is that in Uganda, if you go to a government unit, although you should be able to get free treatment often the medicines are not there.

“When the government sends out new supplies of medicines they are used up very quickly.”

She also said that patients often had to walk many miles to seek medical attention and medical staff could be poorly trained.

Dr White added: “I have now reached 61, so I suppose I am at retirement age, but while I have got the ability and the health at the moment retirement is not on the cards.”

Her next project is raise funds to extend her health centre.