A RETIRED surgeon from the Alexandra Hospital is helping to build new schools in a West African country torn apart by civil war.

Laurie Read has spent the last year working at a hospital in Sierra Leone while helping to rebuild two schools in the town of Waterloo.

The 69-year-old was a headteacher at Waterloo's Peninsular Secondary School 40 years ago before returning to Britain to study medicine.

At that time, Sierra Leone was newly independent from Britain, although shortly after Mr Read's departure, a dictatorship took hold of the country.

In the early 1990s, civil war broke out when the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) entered the country from Liberia to overthrow the ruling party.

For more than 10 years the country was off limits, with RUF rebels tearing apart the country's infrastructure and murdering innocent civilians.

A declaration of peace in 2003 coincided with Mr Read's retirement and he decided to return to see how the country, now acknowledged as the poorest in the world, had changed.

"When I came back to the UK at the age of 28 I assumed I would work here until the children had finished their education before going back to Sierra Leone.

''This was not possible though because of the civil war - even the British Army couldn't go in," said Mr Read, an orthopaedic surgeon at the Woodrow hospital for almost 20 years.

Working for independent Italian charity Emergency, which gives free medical treatment to civilian victims of war, he took a job as a surgeon at the only hospital serving the capital, Freetown.

Located near Waterloo, it gave Mr Read the chance to go back to the town he lived in for six years.

Despite being devastated by civil war, the residents welcomed him warmly, many of them now adults he once taught.

Mr Read said the shed-like primary school only had capacity for 70 students, but is attended by more than 800.

There are no books and many lessons are conducted outdoors. Teachers' salaries are paid without regularity and their attendance is often only guaranteed by generous donations of food from villagers.

It is the same story at the secondary school.

Some of his former students - now teachers, doctors and accountants themselves - have launched a project to try to renovate the two schools.

Mr Read and his wife Sue have also set up the Waterloo Schools Charity to raise much-needed funds from the UK for the programme.

He divides his time between Sierra Leone and the UK and will return next month, while Mrs Read continues the fundraising efforts in Worcestershire.

Work has started to build three new classrooms, a storeroom and office for the primary school.

This project has cost £20,000, with almost half spent on cement, which has to be shipped in from Germany or Britain.

More funds are urgently needed to continue the work.

Mr Read also said the schools desperately needed books, particularly old reference and text books such as encyclopaedias.

Anyone wishing to make a donation is asked to call Mr and Mrs Read on 01386 793222 or the Waterloo Schools Charity on 01793 481 582.