Latest news with #KidsOperatingRoom
Edinburgh Reporter
3 days ago
- Health
- Edinburgh Reporter
Scottish charity founders help 200,000 children annually with surgery network
A husband and wife have both been awarded honours in the King's Birthday Honours List for their contribution to children's healthcare across the world. Garreth and Nicola Wood have been recognised with MBEs for services to health and charity, particularly surgery for children internationally- a nod to their transformative work through the charity they co-founded, Kids Operating Room. The six-year-old charity is a Scottish-based global health organisation creating permanent paediatric operating rooms in low and middle income countries. With projects in more than 40 countries, the charity has helped build capacity for nearly 200,000 life-saving operations annually. Professor George G Youngson CBE, Trustee of Kids Operating Room, said: 'The impact that our charity has had on the lives and health of hundreds of thousands of children across the world is a testament to the leadership, commitment and energy shown by our co-founders, Garreth and Nicola Wood. 'Kids Operating Room is delighted that Garreth and Nicola have both been recognised in the King's Birthday Honours List 2025, a richly deserved recognition.' As co-founders, Garreth and Nicola have helped guide the charity from an ambitious idea into a globally recognised organisation working to solve a critical and largely hidden global health emergency – the lack of access to safe surgical care for children in low-resource countries. Garreth Wood, MBE, Executive Chairman of Kids Operating Room, said: 'From co-founding Kids Operating Room together, to championing causes close to our hearts here in Scotland and around the world, our journey has always been about giving every child a fairer start in life. 'Nicola and I were deeply honoured to each receive an MBE for 'Services to Health and Charity, particularly Surgery for Children internationally'. 'It's humbling to be recognised in this way, and even more special to share this moment side-by-side with Nicola.' Kids Operating Room invests in building local capacity for paediatric surgery by installing state-of-the-art surgical infrastructure, providing training and equipment to local teams, and pioneering the use of solar-powered operating rooms to combat unreliable power supply in remote regions. Over the past seven years, the charity has installed close to 100 paediatric operating rooms across Africa, Asia and Latin America. Its innovative solar surgery systems have been deployed in over 200 hospitals, allowing uninterrupted life-saving operations even during blackouts. It recently installed solar panels at Meru Teaching and Referral Hospital in Kenya to avoid disastrous power outages that resulted in the hospital only able to use one theatre, causing huge back logs. Nicola Wood, MBE, Co-founder and Trustee, said: 'We're so incredibly grateful to everyone who has been a part of this journey. The dedication, passion and belief of our colleagues around the world, who are working tirelessly to build a fairer world for children, inspires us every day. 'These awards are a tribute to the entire team at Kids Operating Room. We are more motivated than ever to keep going.' Kids Operating Room achievements include preventing more than 11 million years of disability and generating over $20 billion of economic benefit for partner countries. The charity's long-term vision is to become redundant – a world where every nation has the infrastructure and expertise to care for its children without relying on external aid. David Cunningham, CEO of Kids Operating Room said: 'I cannot think of two more worthy recipients of an honour. Each and every day, both Garreth and Nicola transform the lives of children around the world. 'It takes tremendous generosity to work so tirelessly to make the lives of complete strangers so significantly better. Everyone at Kids Operating Room is extremely proud to be part of their team and of the work they have inspired and continue to lead with such energy and enthusiasm.' Kids Operating Room has ambitious plans to scale further. In 2019, it pledged to install 100 operating rooms by 2030. That goal was met four and a half years early. Now, the charity is doubling down with a new pledge to install another 100 rooms by the end of 2030. Despite ongoing challenges in the global funding landscape, the charity continues to grow. Garreth and Nicola have personally pledged to underwrite core running costs for the next six years, helping ensure that every external donation goes directly to front-line projects. With headquarters in Edinburgh and a Global Operations Centre in Dundee, Kids Operating Room continues to punch well above its weight on the world stage. The charity remains a shining example of Scottish innovation and global solidarity in healthcare. Garreth and Nicola Wood Like this: Like Related
Scotsman
3 days ago
- Health
- Scotsman
Scottish duo help 200,000 children annually with surgery network
Scottish charity leaders recognised in King's Honours for life-saving work Sign up to our daily newsletter – Regular news stories and round-ups from around Scotland direct to your inbox Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... A high-profile Scottish husband and wife have been jointly awarded MBEs in the King's Birthday Honours List for their remarkable contribution to children's healthcare across the globe. Garreth and Nicola Wood have been recognised for services to health and charity, particularly surgery for children internationally- a nod to their transformative work through the charity they co-founded, Kids Operating Room. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Founded in 2018, Kids Operating Room is a Scottish-based global health organisation creating permanent paediatric operating rooms in low- and middle-income countries. With projects in more than 40 countries, the charity has helped build capacity for nearly 200,000 life-saving operations annually. Gareth Wood at Kids OR warehouse Professor George G Youngson CBE, Trustee of Kids Operating Room, said: 'The impact that our charity has had on the lives and health of hundreds of thousands of children across the world is a testament to the leadership, commitment and energy shown by our co-founders, Garreth and Nicola Wood. 'Kids Operating Room is delighted that Garreth and Nicola have both been recognised in the King's Birthday Honours List 2025, a richly deserved recognition.' As co-founders, Garreth and Nicola have helped guide the charity from an ambitious idea into a globally recognised organisation working to solve a critical and largely hidden global health emergency – the lack of access to safe surgical care for children in low-resource countries. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Garreth Wood MBE, Executive Chairman of Kids Operating Room, said: 'From co-founding Kids Operating Room together, to championing causes close to our hearts here in Scotland and around the world, our journey has always been about giving every child a fairer start in life. Nicola wood speaking at Kids OR event "Nicola and I were deeply honoured to each receive an MBE for 'Services to Health and Charity, particularly Surgery for Children internationally'. 'It's humbling to be recognised in this way, and even more special to share this moment side-by-side with Nicola." Kids Operating Room invests in building local capacity for paediatric surgery by installing state-of-the-art surgical infrastructure, providing training and equipment to local teams, and pioneering the use of solar-powered operating rooms to combat unreliable power supply in remote regions. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Over the past seven years, the charity has installed close to 100 paediatric operating rooms across Africa, Asia and Latin America. Its innovative solar surgery systems have been deployed in over 200 hospitals, allowing uninterrupted life-saving operations even during blackouts. Gareth and Nicola Wood being awarded MBEs in the King's Birthday Honours List It recently installed solar panels at Meru Teaching and Referral Hospital in Kenya to avoid disastrous power outages that resulted in the hospital only able to use one theatre, causing huge back logs. Nicola Wood MBE, Co-founder and Trustee, said: 'We're so incredibly grateful to everyone who has been a part of this journey. The dedication, passion and belief of our colleagues around the world, who are working tirelessly to build a fairer world for children, inspires us every day. 'These awards are a tribute to the entire team at Kids Operating Room. We are more motivated than ever to keep going.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Kids Operating Room achievements include preventing more than 11 million years of disability and generating over $20 billion of economic benefit for partner countries. The charity's long-term vision is to become redundant – a world where every nation has the infrastructure and expertise to care for its children without relying on external aid. David Cunningham, CEO of Kids Operating Room said: 'I cannot think of two more worthy recipients of an honour. Each and every day, both Garreth and Nicola transform the lives of children around the world. 'It takes tremendous generosity to work so tirelessly to make the lives of complete strangers so significantly better. Everyone at Kids Operating Room is extremely proud to be part of their team and of the work they have inspired and continue to lead with such energy and enthusiasm.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Kids Operating Room has ambitious plans to scale further. In 2019, it pledged to install 100 operating rooms by 2030. That goal was met four and a half years early. Now, the charity is doubling down with a new pledge to install another 100 rooms by the end of 2030. Despite ongoing challenges in the global funding landscape, the charity continues to grow. Garreth and Nicola have personally pledged to underwrite core running costs for the next six years, helping ensure that every external donation goes directly to front-line projects. With headquarters in Edinburgh and a Global Operations Centre in Dundee, Kids Operating Room continues to punch well above its weight on the world stage. The charity remains a shining example of Scottish innovation and global solidarity in healthcare.
Telegraph
21-03-2025
- Health
- Telegraph
Children caught in crossfire of rebel assault overwhelm Goma hospital
Goma's only functioning paediatric surgery unit is struggling to cope with hundreds of wounded children after Rwanda-backed rebels launched an assault on the DRC. Large numbers of young children – many of whom have suffered gunshot and shrapnel wounds – have been treated at the specialist operating theatre at Bethesda Hospital in the western part of the city, which was seized by M23 in January. The influx has overwhelmed the small facility, and several patients have died on the operating table. 'Before the M23 arrived, we performed routine surgeries like cleft palate repairs and treated injuries from road accidents,' said a doctor at Bethesda Hospital. 'We occasionally treated gunshot wounds from gang violence, but we were seeing around 10 children a week. Now, we can have 100 children arriving in a single day,' the doctor told The Telegraph. 'Some have severe cranial injuries, others have injuries to their chest or abdomen. These are critical emergencies requiring surgeries that can last two to three hours. And as we treat one child, more keep arriving in the emergency room.' The doctor and his team are among the few surgeons left in Goma – a city of more than two million people – who are capable of performing complex surgeries on children. Their surgical unit was built in 2021 by Kids Operating Room, a Scottish charity which sets up high-tech paediatric operating theatres in hospitals around the world. It is entirely powered by solar panels, which allows it to continue functioning despite frequent blackouts caused by the fighting, but it was never meant to treat war casualties. 'These children are innocent. We are doctors, so we must do our job, but it's really very tough psychologically,' they said. Since the M23 launched its offensive in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in late January, capturing Goma, Bukavu, and surrounding towns, the militia has been accused of numerous human rights abuses. The UN has estimated that at least 3,000 people have been killed, and thousands more injured. Reports of bodies in the streets, arbitrary executions, kidnappings, and gang rapes have flooded out of the cities. Locals describe an atmosphere of constant fear. One source in Bukavu told The Telegraph he 'never knows if he will wake up in the morning,' as the sound of gunfire fills the streets at night. A document seen by The Telegraph details the surgeries performed at Bethesda Hospital in January and February, when fighting between the M23 and Congolese army was at its peak. There seems to be no particular pattern to the injuries – they range from trauma to the face, skull, legs, arms, back, thorax, abdomen, and genitals. Doctors have been forced to amputate the limbs of children as young as three. Most of the patients are under 10. Three weeks ago, soldiers from M23 entered the hospital, the doctor at Bethesda told The Telegraph, looking for government soldiers that were being treated there. 'The M23 took them by force. They came at night and took the men. We don't know where they went,' he said. The group also allegedly kidnapped male family members of patients, who are typically relied upon to assist with care in hospitals across parts of Africa. It is unclear whether they will have been recruited into the rebels ranks or killed. Amnesty International documented similar kidnappings at two hospitals in Goma in late February and early March. At least 130 men were abducted, according to the NGO, and taken to a stadium in the city where they were tortured. The M23 forced some abductees to lie on the ground and whipped them until they agreed to join their ranks. Whilst some civilians were released, many remain missing. Sultani Makenga, the military leader of M23, said in a recent interview that members of the Congolese army at the hospitals pretended to be patients or caregivers. He said M23 found 14 weapons in the hospitals and that hospital staff had alerted them to the situation. Whilst the situation in Goma has begun to ease now the M23 has a firm hold on the city, Bethesda Hospital is providing ongoing care for the children injured at the height of the fighting. 'Some of our patients can take up to one month being managed in the hospital, especially the children being amputated, and they also require psychological support,' the doctor said. 'We are still managing several in the wards. Sometimes patients with gunshot wounds need to go back into the theatre three times, four times, even five times, so we still have quite a big number here,' he added. Hopes of a cessation in the fighting were dashed on Monday when the M23 withdrew from peace talks with the Congolese government set to take place in Angola this week. A spokesperson for the group said that European Union sanctions imposed against their leaders and Rwandan officials accused of supporting them had made the talks 'impracticable.' The rebel group has previously called for an end to what it says is the persecution of ethnic Tutsis in Congo. The DRC's government has repeatedly said the rebels are terrorists and must lay down their arms.
Telegraph
28-02-2025
- Health
- Telegraph
Girls miss out on life saving surgery under Taliban ‘gender apartheid'
Afghan girls are going without vital surgical procedures because of discriminatory restrictions put in place by the Taliban, new medical data and first-hand accounts from the country suggest. Instead they are being forced to rely on faith healers and traditional medicine – even in cases of serious and life-threatening injury and illness. Despite a fifty-fifty gender split among children, over 80 per cent of all surgical procedures carried out at a charity-run paediatric unit in Kabul were performed on boys, according to a survey of its first 1,000 operations. The research, published in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons, focused on the Ataturk Hospital, a government-run facility where a paediatric operating room was built in 2023 by Kids Operating Room (Kids OR), a UK-based charity. Of 1,014 patients under the age of 14, 80.5 per cent were male. The proportion of boys being given elective surgeries was even higher, at 84.6 per cent, while emergent procedures – interventions required immediately to address life-threatening conditions – were also skewed heavily towards boys, who made up 72.7 per cent of those cases. Analysing their findings, the report's authors suggested several factors were to blame for girls not receiving surgeries – ranging from 'local referral tendencies and socio-cultural features' to boys being more exposed to traffic or explosive remnants from Afghanistan's decades of conflict. Evidence gathered by The Telegraph through interviews with doctors and families from across the country suggest draconian restrictions introduced by the Taliban are preventing girls and women from accessing life saving medical care. 'The only thing they are still allowed to do is breathe' Since they swept back into power in 2021 on the back of a calamitous deal struck by the first administration of US President Donald Trump, a deluge of regime diktats has barred women from leaving home without a male relative, working, going to school or training as doctors and nurses. Women have even been banned from raising their voices in public and speaking loudly inside their homes. 'It's not just about surgeries for girls – their access to healthcare has been severely restricted since the Taliban takeover, especially in remote areas,' said Ejaz Nemati* a doctor working in Herat. 'In the city, people can speak about it and it's different, but in small clinics outside cities, our colleagues are not even allowed to treat female patients. If they do, punishment awaits them,' he said. 'Girls here are deprived of everything – the only thing they are still allowed to do is breathe.' Taliban officials insist there are no official policies that explicitly prohibit women from being given medical treatment. 'We provide healthcare services to everyone – girls and boys, women and men – equally, according to Islam,' said Faridullah Omari, a doctor at a Taliban-controlled hospital in Kabul. But Taliban rules on women, which rights groups describe as a regime of gender apartheid, are clearly deterring many women and girls from even seeking care. Golnesa*, whose husband was killed last year in a family dispute in their village in western Afghanistan, told The Telegraph of the challenges she faced as a woman with getting help for her daughter. 'My eight-year-old daughter had a severe cough, and I tried several times to take her to a doctor,' she said. 'Each time I stood by the road and waited for a car to take us to the city's hospital, the Taliban would approach us to ask where my husband was, and I would tell them he was dead – he had been killed. 'I would tell them I needed to take my daughter to the hospital but they would say I was lying,' she said, adding that Taliban morality police enforcers had accused her of wanting to visit the city unaccompanied for sinful reasons. Eventually, as her daughter's condition worsened, Golnesa was able to enlist the help of a male relative from a neighbouring village who accompanied them on the long journey to a medical centre, where the eight-year-old stayed for a week before being discharged. But when she needed to take her daughter back for further treatment, she faced the same scepticism and accusations, and the fear of falling foul of the morality police has confined her to the village. 'Pneumonia cannot be treated with herbal medicine' Across Afghanistan, there are only five facilities specifically equipped to treat children – two government children's hospitals, a paediatric department within another government hospital, and two privately-run hospitals – and all of them are in Kabul. On top of this, the families of the sick or injured almost always have to foot the bill for any treatment they decide to get. Together with the prohibitive cost and lack of availability of healthcare, the Taliban's restrictions mean more families are turning to faith healers and herbal remedies for healing – sometimes with disastrous consequences. In recent weeks local media has been awash with messages from Afghan doctors warning parents not to use home remedies to treat serious illnesses in their children. Dr Farhad Hamdard, a paediatric specialist in Nimruz province in the country's far south-west, urged families to seek medical care for cases of pneumonia. 'Pneumonia cannot be treated with herbal medicine,' he told Afghanistan's Pajhwok news agency. 'Some children have been brought to me who had simple pneumonia, but after being treated with herbal remedies, their condition worsened,' he said. In other reports, Afghan doctors have warned against the use of onion juice or warm mustard oil to treat ear infections, or attempting to deliver babies at home without any medics present, or against swaddling children in blankets to try and cure them of measles. Afghans, particularly in villages and remote areas, have long sought medical care from Mullahs rather than from modern medicine for children, a practice rooted in religious and cultural beliefs. Since the Taliban's return to power, more people go to them before doctors as the country is now run by clerics, some of whom do not believe in modern medicine. The Telegraph was told about a girl living in a village in eastern Afghanistan, who was born with a ventricular septal defect (VSD) – a small hole in her heart. She died at the age of 10 last year after being taken repeatedly to a Mullah who attempted to cure her by writing Quranic verses on pieces of paper, burning them, and getting her to inhale the smoke. 'All of these restrictions imposed by the Taliban, like the ban on women travelling on their own or leaving the house after a certain hour and so on [mean] women in general tend not to actually seek professional help as much as they would in the past,' said Jelena Bjelica, a senior analyst at the Afghanistan Analysts Network. 'The fact is that the current environment, or the current legal regimen in Afghanistan, is such that they [women] have so little movement, their movement is so restricted that they wouldn't even ask for help except in an emergency,' she told The Telegraph. 'So the tendency is that they prefer not to leave the house and go for the traditional remedies.' 'Afghanistan is on the brink of a healthcare catastrophe' Afghanistan has one of the world's least-developed healthcare systems, and women and girls have long struggled to access treatment. But beyond deterring women and girls from seeking help, Taliban policies have now degraded the provision of medical care to a critical point. Fada Mohammad Peykan, a former deputy health minister, said: 'A massive brain drain is underway, and the number of female doctors is falling rapidly. Outside major cities, most surgeons are men, and under Taliban rules, they cannot treat female patients. 'The situation is critical. No new female doctors are being trained, and those who remain are either confined to their homes or fleeing the country. Afghanistan is on the brink of a healthcare catastrophe,' he said. Trump's decision to freeze US aid threatens to tip the country over the edge. His country is the largest donor to Afghanistan by far – it has sent $21 billion (£16.6bn) to the country since it withdrew its forces. Afghanistan is totally dependent on US aid, receiving almost three-and-a half times its health budget in assistance from Washington. The Afghan government is now scrambling to keep hospitals running and schools open. With public services on the brink of collapse, the medical care needs of women and girls are falling even further down the list of priorities. 'Even before, people had little understanding of healthcare for girls. Under Taliban rule, the situation is deteriorating every day,' said Dr Nemati, the doctor from Herat. 'Many of those who cared about their daughters have fled the country. Those who remain are struggling to survive.'
