A midwife and nurse from Blyth has been treating patients in a region of Turkey devastated by the recent earthquake.
Helen Davey is working in the disaster zone with UK-Med, a frontline medical aid charity deployed to the country immediately after the magnitude 7.8 earthquake in February.
Helen has been working at a mobile antenatal clinic in Altinuzum, Gaziantep, along with NHS Obstetrician William Forson.
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The 35-year-old has been travelling the countryside supporting new mums, but will return to her base at the West Middlesex Hospital in Isleworth, West London. She has been working seven days a week for the last seven weeks to help women in desperate need, all while living in a tent herself.
She told The Mirror: "Women suffered shocks, bumps and injuries. A lot thought they had lost their baby."
She even refused to let a bout of tonsillitis stop her.
Helen is the daughter of Blyth town councillors Grant and Susan Davey, while Grant was the Labour leader of Northumberland County Council between 2013 and 2017, and continued to serve as councillor for Kitty Brewster before stepping down at the 2021 local elections.
Mr Davey spoke of his pride in his daughter's work, which has taken the Northumbrian born midwife all over the world.
He said: "The place is pretty devastated. Helen is so keen - she does this type of thing a lot and has worked abroad for some time.
"She trained in Ashington and Cramlington hospitals and at Northumbria University to be a nurse, then did her midwife training at Manchester. She did one-to-one services work about safe home delivery across the country.
"When the funding for that was stopped, she went to work in Uganda for 14 months on home delivery and a little bit of training, before going to India.
"From there she went with the UN to Laos, then this emergency happened. She went out with UK Med and seems to be roughing it, living in a camp with 1,500 people who have lost their homes.
"There's lots of babies being born. "I'm really proud of her. We worry for her, as you can imagine, working in these places. She's toughed it out all over the place."
Helen isn't the only healthcare professional in the family, with her sisters also working in healthcare.
Mr Davey added: "We are just as proud of our other three NHS heroes linked with our family, Alyson who's a paramedic, Charlotte who's an anaesthetist and Zelda who's a Dental Nurse. They are all excellent and lovely heroes in our eyes."
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