A North Harrow accountant will set off on a trek up Africa’s highest mountain tomorrow in a bid to raise £25,000 to buy equipment for a hospital.

Dipak Shah, 49, who works at Hammonds Accountants in Pinner Road, begins his six-day journey up Mount Kilimanjaro with nine friends to try and fund vital machinery for a new hospital in the village of Chaparda in Gujurat, India.

The facility, being built by the Bhagvatinandji Education and Health Trust charity, will provide healthcare to 600,000 people in 250 remote villages who currently have no close access to any hospital.

Mr Shah said: “I saw the idea for the challenge in a magazine, and now we’ve got a group of ten of us together to do it.

“We’re hoping to raise £2,500 each, which is a lot of money, but I think we can do extremely well. It’s such an important cause, these people really have means of getting to hospital at the moment.

“We’ve been training a lot – we’ve done the Three Peaks in Yorkshire and we have been going to the Dunstable Hills, so hopefully we’re fit enough to do it.”

At 19,341ft high, the mountain’s Kibo peak is a tough challenge for the ten fundraisers, with altitude sickness a common problem for people climbing it.

Mr Shah has raised nearly £900 in sponsorship so far, but hopes that more people will contribute so that the hospital can buy equipment.

He added: “I would be most grateful if people could generously donate to help these poor people in need by sponsoring me, to bring a much better healthcare system needed for these thousands of people.”

For more information and to sponsor Mr Shah, click here .