Canberra Hospital intensive care nurse Therese Knight has just returned home to Kaleen after her second trip to Africa serving on board the world's largest independent hospital ship - the Africa Mercy.
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It is one thing to acknowledge the devastating divide between 'the haves and the have-nots'.
But it takes a whole lot of pluck to break out of your own bubble and travel half-way around the world to help.
Through Mercy Ships the 62-year-old volunteered in Madagascar in 2015 and this time volunteered on board for six weeks in the maxillofacial surgery ward while docked in the port city of Cotonou, in the West African nation of Benin.
"There are no health services so people are desperate for treatment," she said.
"For all that has been written and talked about in our medical and nursing courses in Australia, patient-centred care is still not generally practiced. On the Mercy Ship, it is unavoidable."
The mother of four and grandmother of three said seeing people of all ages flood in for help reinforced a sense of common humanity.
However, the situation on the ground was worlds apart from life at home.
"People waiting for cataract surgery are blind and there are no services for them. On any one day we'd screened 431 people, only 20 get the surgery and 120 are turned away," she said.
Facial tumours, which would be nipped in the bud in Australia, were evolved to such an extent some patients were not able to stand.
"The biggest tumour I saw during my first trip in Madagascar was 7.4 kilograms," she said. "That is two babies in weight hanging off someone's face."
Counting the numbers of people that couldn't be helped was heartbreaking.
So to keep herself on an even keel during the intense field service Ms Knight said she focused on the good that could be done, and doing it.
She has plans to return to serve with Mercy Ships every two years, and admits while she was humbled by the overwhelming need, being able to do something about it had her hooked.
"You are working to your strengths and inspired by the vision that you are working in," she said. "It is this sense of feeling fully alive and that's a rare thing."
Ms Knight, who is not a practising Christian, said the Mercy Ships organisation relies on self-funded volunteers to operate and while it's business model should not work, it does.
"It doesn't make sense to an economic rationalist that people would act like this, pay $4000 to get to Africa and then pay $600USD per month to stay on the ship. But everybody does it, the surgeons, anesthetists, deck-hands, hairdressers, baristas...everyone," she said.
"It is a very high-cost holiday but the value is enormous. It shows our societies are far more than just economies. If I have health, time and money how can I not be part of this amazing work?"
