A retired doctor from Ponsanooth will brave the notorious Jungle camp in Calais next month as she seeks to bring succour to refugees living in terrible conditions on the French coast.

Sally Sutton, 70, will spend a month sleeping at the camp where she hopes to set up a dispensary to provide medical aid and supplies to people who have next to nothing.

She said: "I've got skill and I've got time, and I felt it was important not just to sit and say 'ain't it awful about this camp in Calais,' but to go do something.

"It slowly built up until I thought 'I've got no reason not to do something.'"

She added: "It's interesting that it's holocaust week this week. I have been watching a documentary about the soldiers that did the filming when they liberated the camps. They had all these people still alive and nobody would take them: not Britain, not America, not Israel.

"Have we not learned anything in the time since then."

Sally decided she wanted to do something in September last year, and asked about getting involved via Médecins Sans Frontières or the Red Cross, but was told they did not have any contacts in Calais.

Eventually she met a man from Camborne who was taking supplies to the camp, who put her in contact with a nurse and a doctor working over there.

Sally leaves on Saturday, and said she feels "shaky" about the trip, "I'd be a fool not to be," but she has done aid work before, including in Mozambique following the civil war.

She said: "I'm not frightened, but I don't know what to expect. The situation is awful, and it might get violent.

"It's important to be a bit nervous, you can't go off half cocked."

Sally has been collecting money through family and friends to buy medical supplies: "Whatever you might find in your medicine cabinet at home, they don't have bandages, aspirin, that sort of stuff."

Although she hopes to set up a dispensary, she said that will depend on the French authorities and the plans of her hosts at the camp, but she will provide her expertise and said when she arrives she will put the money "to the best use."

As part of the fundraising effort, Ponsanooth Stores has collected over £200 with a pot on the counter, and on Thursday staff wore a onesie to work to raise cash and awareness for the trip.

Manager Michelle Firminger said: "Sally is such a character, and she has all these skills and expertise.

"We thought 'what could we do to draw attention to support what she is doing.'"