Top Glasgow and Edinburgh surgical colleges team up to help kids in South Sudan

The two colleges, which boast a combined membership of more than 45,000 from around the world, have joined forces to raise funding in support of KidsOr’s scholarship programme.

The South Sudan programme aims to support the scholarship and professional training of the country’s first paediatric surgeon, for a period of at least five years.

Each college will be looking to raise £6500, as £13,000 supports a trainee surgeon through one year of training.

Michael Stitt, director of partnerships at The Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, said: “The foundation exists in order to help to build sustainable surgical capacity in communities suffering from a chronic shortage of care.

“We are funding our share of the donation through the Global Surgery Foundation and KidsOr is a fantastic example of the very reason we have the initiative in place. It provides vital services to children who might not have otherwise had access to healthcare they need.

“We are delighted to help fund the first paediatric surgeon in South Sudan, and look forward to seeing the positive impact it has on children in the area.”

Professor George Youngson, CBE trustee of KidsOr, said: “Developing surgical services for children in a difficult part of the world needs careful planning, commitment and resources, particularly at a time when health services in our own country are being greatly stretched.

“However, in a characteristically Scottish visionary way, the two surgical colleges have come together and taken an initiative that will provide treatment for a huge number of children in need of care elsewhere in the world.

“This support will not just be life-changing for some, it will change many lives.

“Whilst the pandemic has a global perspective, so does the lack of access to surgical treatment for children, particularly in those parts of the world like South Sedan, where external aid is hard to penetrate.”