Dr Ali Naddaf spent two weeks operating aboard the Global Mercy in Sierra Leone
He is a consultant in endocrine surgery in Germany. He did not take a sabbatical; he took two weeks.
The most common reason a specialist never volunteers is not reluctance. It is the assumption that it would mean leaving their job.
A thyroid specialist in a country full of goitres
Dr Ali Naddaf is a senior consultant in endocrine surgery in Germany, where thyroid operations are routine and patients are referred early.
In Sierra Leone he operated on goitres that had been growing for years, sometimes decades - the kind of case a European surgeon may read about in training and never see.
What two weeks looks like
Short volunteer placements work because the ship is already running. The operating rooms, the sterilisation, the ward nurses, the anaesthetic team and the patient screening are all in place. A visiting surgeon joins a functioning hospital rather than building one.
Why he intends to come back
He left planning to return annually. That is the pattern Mercy Ships depends on far more than one-off heroics: specialists who fold a fortnight of this work into their working year, again and again.