A Scottish Government Minister has praised the work of a pioneering Dundee charity which provides life-saving surgery for children in low and middle-income countries.
Neil Gray - the Minister for Culture, Europe and International Development - was on a fact-finding trip to Kids Operating Room’s (KidsOR) logistics centre in the city where he received an update on how Scottish Government support had been put to use in Africa.
From its bases in Dundee, Edinburgh and Nairobi, KidsOR provides Low and Middle Income Countries with surgical teams and the infrastructure and training needed to perform operations for children who would otherwise go untreated.
Since 2018, KidsOR has installed 50 operating rooms (ORs) – averaging 3,000 items each – with more than 60,000 children in 22 countries accessing life-changing or live-saving care through KidsOR work.
By 2030 the charity aims to have more than doubled the number of installed ORs across Africa to 120, providing essential surgery to more than 635,000 children.
As part of the Covid-19 pandemic response, in July 2021 the Scottish Government provided funding to purchase and transport 300 oxygen concentrators to Malawi, Rwanda and Zambia and for 30 disposable oxygen concentrators in Malawi, with KidsOR overseeing the logistics challenge of securely shipping all items to their destination hospitals.
Forty surplus NHS Scotland ventilators worth £743,553 were donated in August 2021 with £34,500 provided by the Scottish Government for transportation costs, followed by a donation of 25 million surplus PPE items worth £11.2 million and £250,00 required to transport the items to Malawi, Rwanda and Zambia.
Neil Gray said: “These surgical facilities make real changes to the lives and prospects of thousands of children all around the world, and their communities, and KidsOR should be commended for this work.”
KidsOR co-founder and Chairman, Garreth Wood, added: “Working with regional partners, we train local surgical teams, and we work with health authorities in-country to ensure that the facilities we create are maintained and upgraded over the years.
"As a result, children are treated in a specially designed, fully equipped surgical unit and given skilled care by local surgeons who speak the same language as them.”
- More information on KidsOR, can be found here.
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