PRIME ministers, presidents, pop stars and bandwagon-jumping politicians by the score have spent a lot of time this summer talking about Africa and its poverty. Forgive me for the cynicism but the emphasis in that sentence lies on the word "talking".

I try to be a charitable sort of chap - my wife and I have been supporting two African charities by standing orders from my bank for some years now - but when I hear politicians and sundry minor celebrities talking in billions, I tend to shake my head.

For it is well known that many of the millions given by kind-hearted Westerners are simply filched by bent politicians in the Third World. Or are prevented from reaching its starving victims because of walls of red tape or bureaucratic incompetence: hundreds of millions of aid for tsunami victims are still lying unused eight months later.

So it was a with a huge gulp of fresh air that I set out on a lovely summer's morning to meet a one time lady doctor from Settle who not only talks about aid for Africa (which she does at length) but also gets on her bike (or rather, planes and jeeps) to see that the aid that Dales folk raise actually gets to the people who need it.

What's more, she does so at an age when many of us have not only put up our feet, but have decided that a trip to the local bowls club is too much of a trek.

However, life has always been a challenge to Dr Pam Douglas, born to a working class family in Surrey in 1927 and who, as a young lass, began to dream of being a doctor at a time when women trying to enter that glorious profession were looked upon, at best, as cranks or, at worst, as would-be witches.

But Pam Douglas - better known in Settle by her maiden name of Dr Hogg - won a place to the local grammar school and studied long and hard. Even then, she was turned down as a medical student and spent several years doing research in London hospital labs before someone noticed that she was quite good at it - even good enough for a shot at that cherished goal, a medical degree.

After graduation and work in a Lincolnshire hospital, she arrived in Settle as a junior partner to a man-and-wife couple of GPs, Leo and Jane O'Connor. "I was extremely fortunate that Jane was already practising in the area as a female doctor. She had broken the ice, which must have been quite a job at the time."

Consumed with her profession, she married comparatively late in life to a leading Scottish engineer John Douglas, a man whose job called for constant travel. Pam went with him

In South Africa, he suffered a heart attack, but recovered long enough to win a contract that took the couple to Hong Kong. There, Pam got a job treating patients in one of the tougher, working class districts - and she had her first glimpse of Third World medicine.

Soon afterwards, husband John died. Pam had kept Settle as her base and began several years of working as a locum, much of it in Scotland, but was a keen church goer in Craven whenever she was home.

There, she began to build a circle of friends and professional colleagues who were actively supporting doctors working with missionaries in the Third World. It wasn't long before interest became hands-on involvement with the charity Christian Outreach.

"I took a holiday to see some of the work being done in Eritrea," she laughs at her cottage tucked away from the Skipton road in Settle. "People thought it was an odd place to go on holiday as there was a full-scale civil war going on in Ethiopia at the time.

"There was a huge health crisis in the Sudan, too - as there still is today - so I ended up doing some work in a tiny village miles out in the bush."

It was the start of a new cycle of life. Since then, Pam has flown out to some of the world's most inhospitable places to practise her profession at an age when most of us would be retired and is only too happy to look after her large and rather wild garden.

She has worked in Pakistan on the Afghanistan border - again, another of the world's most dangerous places - because, as she says: "There are almost no female doctors in that area. The local women suffer terribly because their husbands won't let them be examined by male doctors."

And in recent years, she has devoted her attentions on the tiny African state of Malawi, working with a Craven-based charity called Moyo - meaning "life and health."

"The last time I was there," she recalled, "we had collected a number of second-hand sewing machines so that the women of the village could begin to earn some money making clothes. The women carried those heavy machines on their shoulders along a dirt track to the village five miles away. And they sang as they went.

"That brings real joy to the heart. People ask me why I do all this work to help those people. My answer is simple: I do it because of what these people do for me. When I return to Settle after one of those trips, my heart sings too."

o Moyo delivers aid direct to the people of Malawi. At present, they need second-hand bicycles, simple medicines, old football kits for the youngsters and donations. Anyone wishing to contribute should ring donations secretary John Lewis on 01729 825573.