KidsOR: Edinburgh-based charity has changed the lives of 50,000 youngsters

An Edinburgh-based charity has transformed the lives of almost 50,000 children in some of the world’s poorest countries after helping them access vital operations.

Kids Operating Room (KidsOR) last year installed a further 23 operating rooms in Africa, taking its total in Low and Middle Income Countries (LMIC) to 50, and has plans to increase this to 75 by the end of 2022.

Theatres set up by the charity in some of the poorest countries have seen thousands of children go through their doors in the past 12 months, receiving surgery which often proves to be live-saving.

Chief executive David Cunningham said 2021 was the charity’s “most impactful year yet” and they were “hugely excited that by the end of 2022 we will further expand access to safe surgery for children in low-resource settings with the addition of another 25 operating rooms”.

-Zainabu Haroub Said, who travelled 600km to Muhimbili, Tanzania for skin grafts and operations to treat severe burns. (Pic: Daud Lyon, KidsOR)

“By providing more than 3,000 pieces of specialised paediatric surgical equipment in each of our 50 operating rooms, more children are now able to access the vital life-changing or life-saving surgical care,” he said.

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The University of California San Francisco, working with data collectors in each KidsOR partner hospitals, estimated the economic benefit across the African and South American countries where the charity operates was 1.52 billion US dollars (£1.16 billion).

The charity was launched by husband-and-wife philanthropists Garreth and Nicola Wood, and in 2021 the data collectors found KidsOR had enabled 49,154 operations.

Bright, friendly and welcoming: The KidsOR ward at the national hospital, Abuja, Nigeria.

This was a 65% increase on the 29,780 it performed the year before.

Of the almost 50,000 operations last year, the charity said 66% were elective while 34% were emergency procedures.

In Nigeria, a country of approximately 30 million children, KidsOR has installed three Operating Rooms at the Abuja National Hospital, creating capacity to perform 1800 operations a year, and increasing the number of neonates accessing surgery by 140% - delivering an estimated economic benefit of $37 billion since 2019.

Now there is at least one trainee paediatric surgeon and one trainee anaesthesiologist present in every operation, providing a long-term positive impact for children’s access to lifesaving surgery in Nigeria.

Little Jibril was born with a hernia and eventually treated in the operating room within Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya. (Pic: KidsOR/Loduye Ghaisen)

“The relief on the faces of parents when they realise that their kids can now have operations within a few days – enough time for preoperative preparation – is priceless,” said the chief paediatric surgeon, Dr Olubunmi Majekodunmi.

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Zambia, which has only six paediatric surgeons serving 8 million children, was the charity’s largest project in a single country at the one time with six operating rooms installed in two hospitals. Before installation, 20% of the operations at University Teaching Hospital went ahead without the necessary surgical resources – the biggest barrier being regulating children’s temperatures which often meant having to delay life-saving operations to warmer days.

Now two new dedicated paediatric surgeons are in training, there is capacity for 3600 operations a year, and 61,000 disability adjusted life years are being averted each year in Zambia.

Across the globe more than two billion children lack access to safe surgery and, every year, more children die from not getting the surgery they need than from Malaria, HIV and TB combined.

In 2021 medics treated 132 unique conditions and prevented 835,000 years of disability. It also handed out 22 scholarships in Africa to help train paediatric surgeons of the future.

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