Baby abandoned by roadside is now changing lives

As a newborn, Becky Chaplin still had her umbilical cord attached when a vet who was out jogging discovered her in a bag by the roadside in Kenya.

She was taken to an orphanage and later adopted by British parents, before eventually moving to the UK when she was 10-years-old.

Becky, who lives in East Grinstead, said she "always had a heart to come back to an African country," and decided to volunteer for the international health charity Mercy Ships.

As an occupational therapist, she trained the first cohort of physiotherapists on board the "floating hospital" in Sierra Leone.

The West African country established its first university-level physiotherapist course in 2018, and in 2023 Becky helped mentor its 15 new graduates.

Before then there were only six fully-trained physiotherapists in Sierra Leone for a population of about nine million people, according to Mercy Ships.

Becky described the programme as "a fantastic move forward in access to training".

"Previously, anyone wishing to become a physiotherapist would have to fly to Ghana, Cuba, Kenya, or further afield for training," she said.

Becky also used her experience working in the burns unit at the Queen Victoria Hospital in East Grinstead to help develop a service at her local hospital in Sierra Leone.

She said her aim was always "to help children and adults with disabilities".

Speaking to, Sarah Gorrell on BBC Radio Sussex, Becky said: "Because of disfigurement, burns patients were often shunned or abandoned by communities."

Becky says after surgery and rehabilitation "we see them transforming, their personalities come out and then they go home with joy and with a testament of change".

She acknowledged it was not always a perfect outcome.

"In those situations, what we do is share love, Jesus' love and also we get them to a place where they can engage back in their community," she said.

Mercy Ships describes itself as a faith-based international development organisation which deploys hospital ships to some of the poorest countries in the world.

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