Thanks to money raised through our linked charity Rays of Hope, over £2,000 was provided to enable experts at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust to provide training for doctors at a hospital in Uganda.

Professor Giles Toogood, Consultant Hepatobiliary and Emergency General Surgeon and Mr Adam Peckham-Cooper, General Surgeon at Leeds Teaching Hospitals attended the training camp in March 2024.

Leeds Teaching Hospitals and the University of Leeds already have close ties with the Mengo Hospital in Uganda, with Leeds medical students and junior doctors undertaking training here.

Professor Toogood and Mr Peckham-Cooper were able to bring donated laparoscopic equipment, enabling training in laparoscopic surgery to take place for the first time at the hospital.

We spoke to Professor Toogood who told us:

“It was a hugely worthwhile experience, we were able to provide four days of teaching to medical students and trainees. We also operated for five days and during this time we completed 30 laparoscopic cases.

“As well as running this training week for local surgeons and teaching in the medical school, we learnt valuable insights from our Ugandan colleagues and hope that we can set up further exchanges for consultants, junior surgeons and more medical students to benefit from this fantastic opportunity.”