A Keighley soldier is helping to administer desperately needed health care to Kenya's poorest people.

Private Tracy Finnan, pictured right - a combat medical technician - is part of a team which is seeing at first hand the poverty in arid desert villages, where many children face the tragedy of AIDS.

Tracy, 18, with colleagues from the 1 Close Support Medical Regiment, has been working in temperatures up to 40C.

Although southern Africa is now heading towards its winter, the still-intense midday heat means the soldiers need to drink about eight litres of water a day to avoid dehydration.

Tracy, a former pupil of Holy Family School, said the reception the troops had received from villagers was incredible.

Children mobbed the soldiers, and often when the team set up a medical clinic it received a gift of goats or chickens from the local chief.

Tracy said: "It is so hard seeing small children who have been born with HIV, and you know they have months to live once they catch the full blown AIDS.

"The conditions have been very tough to work in. One day it can be baking hot, the next you are holding on to tent flaps to stop yourself getting washed away in a storm. But the Kenyans seem so grateful for the treatment we are giving them. Some have walked literally days to get to the rural clinics."