FORMER Evesham mayoress Joyce Davey is back from five weeks in Nepal helping to set up a clinic in a remote mountain village.

The village, Kermi stands 10,000ft - about two miles - above sea level in the Himalayan country's remote, poverty-stricken Humla region, reachable only after a gruelling trek up a steep valley.

Conditions were basic, said Mrs Davey, who added: "It was hard work and quite an experience, but I'd do it again.

"What struck me was the stillness: no telephones, no televisions, radios, car fumes or lorries.

"But there were no toilets either, just a hole in the ground, I didn't have a shower for three weeks and I had to wash my hair in a stream."

The Rotary Club of Bredon Hill supports the Nepal Trust which works to raise living standards in Nepalese villages.

It was through her links with the club that Mrs Davey found herself among the 15 western doctors, nurses, and craftspeople helping to build the clinic. Despite the country's image as a beautiful, unspoilt trekkers' destination, Mrs Davey said she learnt the average weekly earnings were just £5, with widespread squalor and poverty.

She saw a very basic hospital in the capital Kathmandu and discovered that in the villages, even the simplest medical facilities were often several days' walk away.

At one impromptu surgery on a village hut rooftop, the group's medics saw 68 men, women and children in under three hours, many complaining of ailments typically associated with inadequate sanitation and poor diet.

Mrs Davey said: "I saw one child and thought she was eight months, but she was three-years-old and had night blindness and an eye infection."

The condition could cause permanent blindness but, Mrs Davey pointed out, if it was caught early it could be easily and cheaply treated with vitamins.

Helped by an interpreter, she noted information about the villagers' health to help extend the Nepal Trust and local medics' picture of the area's health problems.

The other part of her work was helping to construct the clinic, sawing, planing and painting wooden planks to make roof beams and floorboards.

Now finished, the Nepal Trust would run the clinic with locally trained Nepalese staff, said Mrs Davey.

"They must have their own people trained and in post," she added. "Western nurses will continue to visit it at regular intervals and the director of the Nepal Trust is due to visit in May."

She added that the trust hoped to set up a scheme to help educate the villagers via people sponsoring a child so they could attend a boarding school in Kathmandu.