LINKS have been forged between St John Ambulance Somerset and Kenya St John as part of a twinning exchange.

The Short Term Assistance Plus Local Effort arrangement couples UK counties with African countries to exchange views and ideas and to help their development.

Selina Kibogy Kandie, chief executive officer, and Fred Otieno, training manager, visited the Somerset County HQ to meet officers Richard Mulligan, assistant commander Roy Prager and chief executive Ross Young.

Afterwards, Mr Mulligan said: “It was a good meeting.

“Kenya has over 16,000 volunteer members, three-quarters of them under 18.

“Like us, they’re the leading first aid related training organisation in the country but have special needs and targets.

“The main ones are to influence sexual behaviour change among 4,000 youths over the next three years and to improve the quality of health amongst 6,000 HIV affected people over the same period.

“We plan to help them in their training of trainers and to raise funds for a new regional HQ in the North-East and any other way we can.”

Mr Young said: “There’s no statutory ambulance service in Kenya and St John is competing with many private companies, so there’s a need to update their equipment on a regular basis.

“These were excellent talks and we’ll help in every way we can, always remembering that we have many commitments ourselves to continue to provide the services we do around the county.”