Dave Croft has come a very long way since he walked the halls of Howe Sound Secondary School in the early '80s. The former local, who still has strong ties to the community with "loads of" good friends, is saving lives in the most destitute parts of the world as a project co-ordinator for the international medical and humanitarian organization, Doctors Without Borders.
Croft said he knew from a very early age what he wanted to do with his life, and he left town in 1983 to study international relations at the University of British Columbia.
"I knew I wanted to get into the international field right away and I've always been interested in international relations, all forms of political science," he said.
Shortly after graduation, Croft packed up his bags and eventually landed a job with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) - which translates to Doctors Without Borders -dedicated to providing emergency aid to those affected by conflicts, epidemics as well as natural or man-made disasters.
Since 2003, Croft has travelled the globe helping treat earthquake victims, AIDS patients and people in the midst of epidemics in Afghanistan, Kashmir, Pakistan, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, south Sudan and most recently Papua New Guinea.
Croft provides MSF with logistical support, networking and security analysis and leaves the actual medical treatment to certified staff.
Other than a two-week first aid course, Croft said he's not in any way medically trained.
"When I was in Squamish I was trained in the old St. John Ambulance two-week course, the industrial first aide and that's about it," he said.
But Croft's limited training hasn't hindered his expertise on the impact of the epidemics he helps fight.
For his most recent mission, Croft left his pharmacist wife in their Florida home to set out in mid-December on a three-month mission to the Oceania islands to help fight a cholera epidemic.
"Cholera is transmitted very easily," he said. "If you follow how cholera moves around a country it follows major transportation routes by the highways, rivers -such as the Sepik River in our case - or along the coast."
In an effort to stop the epidemic Croft, three nurses and a water sanitation expert set up several cholera treatment centres as well as smaller mobile units along the dense jungles of the Sepik River.
"The cholera was pretty much located along then northern shore of the country. It had started in the Morobe province and then had moved up to being spotted around Madang and eventually really manifested itself in the Sepik River corridor and that's where it really blew up and huge numbers of people were really affected," he said.
"I've been in a lot of jungles and I've never seen anything like Papua New Guinea, that's for sure. It's amazing."
As a project co-ordinator, Croft said rapid response is key when dealing with the bacterial infection.
"With cholera you need to get in there and if you don't, if someone doesn't get treated quickly they can die very easily just by dehydration. They just go into massive dehydration they're throwing up, they've got extreme diarrhea, eventually they can go into shock and unfortunately that's what kills a lot of people," he said.
"It's a funny disease in a sense actually because it's very easy with education to stop people from getting sick and it's very easy to treat if they get to a cholera treatment unit in time."
Cholera treatment for the most part includes simple rehydration, either orally or in sever cases intravenously, with most treatment lasting no longer than two days.
"They go from near death to walking out in 48 hours so it's one of the interventions that is quite a feel good one to do because you can see the patient get better as a opposed to a lot of other things that might take a lot longer," said Croft.
"Eventually you can send them home and give them lots of health education materials about how to wash their hands etc."
Croft isn't sure exactly how many people the units treated over the three month period because the World Health Organization, not MSF, kept a patient tally, but he estimates more than 2,100 people were treated for cholera.
