KEY FEMALE FIGURES VISIT DUNDEE LOGISTICS HUB

For the Image: (L) Co-Founder Nicola Wood and (R) Trustee Lili Buffet
Two inspirational female leaders visited the logistics hub of a pioneering charity that ships life-saving surgical equipment to low- and middle-income countries.
Kids Operating Room (KidsOR) Co-Founder Nicola Wood and Trustee Lili Buffet visited the Dundee facility to mark the charity reaching major milestones including 70,000 operations completed to date, 100 operations now being carried out daily, and over one million years of disability prevented from ever happening.
The charity’s Centre for Global Operations plays a crucial role in their success. The Dundee team carry out surveys of hospitals, test, pack and ship surgical equipment, and manage installations in hospitals across Africa, Latin America and Asia.
Nicola said: “The Dundee centre is the hub for all of our work and our team here contribute first-hand to strengthening healthcare systems and creating a sustainable impact across everything we do.
Our ambition has always been to transform children’s access to safe surgery. By working with each country’s Ministry of Health, we are helping to close the gap in the provision of safe and accessible paediatric surgery for even the most remote and vulnerable children.”
She added: “Every child should have access to safe surgery when they need it – it is a basic human right. In many of the countries we work in, a broken leg can be a life sentence. My eldest child, who required surgical intervention to save her life, would likely not have been here today had she been born in a low- or middle-income country and I know many of our team have similar stories to tell.”
Lili Buffett, who was making her first visit to the Dundee team having joined the charity’s Board in 2021, said: “It is an honour to be visiting the team here in Dundee and learning more about their work that is now integral to the provision of care for children in 26different countries. Speaking to our amazing staff team has been hugely insightful and it is impressive to see what goes on behind the scenes in this global movement of medical supplies.
She added: “While today marks an important milestone – more than one million years of disability prevented through the provision of timely surgical interventions and more than 70,000 children having accessed care, we know there is still a long way to go until we can say that every child has access to safe surgery when they need it. We know that’s a key pillar of the sustainable development goals and I look forward to working closely with the entire KidsOR team to ensure we make that a reality.”
All of KidsOR’s bases – in Dundee, Edinburgh, London and Nairobi – contribute to providing the logistics to ensure developing countries have the correct surgical teams, infrastructure and training required to perform operations for children which would otherwise go untreated.
In addition to providing state of the art paediatric Operating Rooms, KidsOR funds the training of children’s surgeons and anaesthesia providers and works with national Ministries of Health to develop sustainable healthcare services.