"I qualified as a medical doctor about two years ago from Isfahan. Isfahan is a major city in Iran, about the size of Glasgow and according to our local belief the most beautiful city in the whole world. A famous song about my city says that those who have seen Isfahan have seen half of the world!

For the last two years I was working in a small village in the southern part of Iran.

I was the only doctor for this village, the nearest hospital was about 1 hour away. So in some ways my work is very similar to that of Dr von Kaehne - I had to deal with all sorts of emergencies and had to be prepared for difficult situations without much help close by.

I loved Lochgoilhead. It is so beautiful. Everything is so quiet, the trees, the mountains, the loch... The village I work in is in the desert, so things are very different.

I liked the facilities I saw in Lochgoilhead Medical Centre - particularly the BASICs bag - the bag Dr von Kaehne has for attendance at car crashes etc - and the spirometry machine - I was very surprised and impressed hearing that the village had bought the machine for the practice. I also liked the automatic defibrillator which is able to discern itself whether a shock is the right thing to help someone in a cardiac arrest.

But most of all I liked the friendly and warm attitude everyone had - I feel quite at home in Scotland after only a few days!

I was also really astonished seeing the grace with which patients accepted that they would not need any medicine after a consultation with the doctor! In my village everyone wants medicine and thinks a visit to the doctor has not really been worthwhile if no injections were given! I had many hard fights trying to make people understand that viruses don't need antibiotics.

Altogether this was a very good experience and I will have a lot of things to think about when I return next month to my home country."