David Nott Foundation concludes first surgical training course in Turkey
The first David Nott Foundation Hostile Environment Surgical Training (HEST) course concluded in Gaziantep, Turkey on 17 April, 2016. The HEST course is a satellite of the Surgical Training for the Austere Environment (STAE) course which David directs at the Royal College of Surgeons of England. The HEST course has a smaller faculty and fewer resource needs meaning it can take surgical training right to the front line.
Eight faculty members, including Course Director David Nott, taught 30 Syrian doctors life-saving surgical techniques. They were taught neurosurgery, maxillo-facial, thoracic, cardiac, abdominal, vascular and paediatric surgery, orthopaedics and obstetrics and gynaecology.
The Syrian doctors travelled from Hama, Homs, Idlib and Aleppo to be taught by David and his faculty. Many of the surgeons David had worked with before, during his visits to Syria in 2012, 2013 and 2014.
‘It was wonderful to see so many familiar faces and continue the teaching I have been honoured to be able to give over many years to my Syrian friends. By holding this course on the Turkish-Syrian border we are bringing life-saving surgical techniques directly to the people who need them most. Following the fantastic response to this inaugural course, we will in the future hold more HEST courses wherever in the world there is the need,’ David said.
David with the HEST faculty and students
Press Release: The Rt Hon. the Baroness Boothroyd OM to be Patron of The David Nott Foundation
London, 20 April 2016 : The David Nott Foundation is delighted to announce that The Rt Hon. the Baroness Boothroyd OM has agreed to become the Foundation’s Patron.
Baroness Boothroyd said: ‘I have for many years been a supporter and admirer of David Nott and the extraordinary work he does both in the UK and abroad. The Foundation will enable him to train many more doctors in war-torn regions which desperately need skilled medical help. It is a great cause worthy of support and I am privileged to be its Patron.’
David Nott commented: ‘I am absolutely thrilled that Baroness Boothroyd has agreed to be the Patron of our Foundation. I have for many years been a great admirer of her and know she will bring her incomparable warmth, drive and energy to the Foundation as we move forward with our work teaching the best in war surgical skills.’
Baroness Boothroyd becomes Patron at an exciting time for the Foundation as it expands its activities and programmes.
On Sunday 17 April, the first David Nott Foundation Hostile Environment Surgical Training (HEST) course concluded in Gaziantep, Turkey.
The HEST course is a satellite of the Surgical Training for the Austere Environment (STAE) course which David directs at the Royal College of Surgeons of England. The HEST course has a smaller faculty and fewer resource needs meaning it can take surgical training right to the front line.
Eight faculty members, including Course Director David Nott, taught 30 Syrian doctors life-saving surgical techniques. They were taught neurosurgery, maxillo-facial, thoracic, cardiac, abdominal, vascular and paediatric surgery, orthopaedics and obstetrics and gynaecology.
The Syrian doctors travelled from Hama, Homs, Idlib and Aleppo to be taught by David and his faculty. Many of the surgeons David had worked with before, during his visits to Syria in 2012, 2013 and 2014.
‘It was wonderful to see so many familiar faces and continue the teaching I have been honoured to be able to give over many years to my Syrian friends. By holding this course on the Turkish-Syrian border we are bringing life-saving surgical techniques directly to the people who need them most. Following the fantastic response to this inaugural course, we will in the future hold more HEST courses wherever in the world there is the need,’ David Nott said.
Note to editors
For further information please contact Elly Nott
[email protected]
The Rt Hon. the Baroness Boothroyd OM
Betty Boothroyd entered Parliament in 1973. She had a distinguished parliamentary career serving on many select committees and as a whip. In 1992 the Labour MP for West Bromwich West became the first woman Speaker in over 700 years of Commons history. Well-liked by MPs, she stood no nonsense in the Commons chamber and was a firm but fair arbiter of the House’s rules. In 1992 she was named Parliamentarian of the Year, and in her role as Speaker she won the respect of members from all parties as she stood up for the rights of backbenchers against ministers and the executive.
Born in Yorkshire, she lived in America in the 1950s where she helped one John Kennedy on his election campaigns. She joined the Labour Party as a teenager and spent some time as a secretary to various MPs. After entering Parliament she won a seat on Labour’s National Executive Committee. She has at least eight honorary degrees and several “Freedom of the City” awards. The screening of prime minister’s questions overseas, notably in the US, made her an internationally famous figure. She was Chancellor of the Open University for twelve years.
About David Nott OBE FRCS
David has been a Consultant Surgeon at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital for 23 years where he specialises in general surgery. David also performs vascular and trauma surgery at St Mary’s Hospital and cancer surgery at the Royal Marsden Hospital.
For the past twenty three years David has taken unpaid leave each year to work for the aid agencies Médecins Sans Frontières, the International Committee of the Red Cross and Syria Relief. He has provided surgical treatment to the victims of conflict and catastrophe in Bosnia, Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Chad, Darfur, Yemen, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, Iraq, Pakistan, Libya, Syria, Central African Republic, Gaza and Nepal. As well as treating victims of conflict and catastrophe and raising hundreds of thousands of pounds for charitable causes, David teaches advanced surgical skills to local medics and surgeons when he is abroad. In London, he teaches the Surgical Training for the Austere Environment (STAE) course at the Royal College of Surgeons of England.
In 2015 David established the David Nott Foundation with his wife Elly. The Foundation will support surgeons to develop their operating skills for warzones and austere environments.
About The David Nott Foundation
The David Nott Foundation is a UK registered charity which provides surgeons and medical professionals with the skills they need to provide relief and assistance in conflict and natural disaster zones around the world. As well as providing the best medical care, David Nott Foundation surgeons will train local healthcare professionals; leaving a legacy of education and improved health outcomes.
Founded and led by renowned British surgeon David Nott, the Foundation benefits from his passion for advancing the best in surgical research, practice and teaching as well as his commitment to helping vulnerable people in some of the most dangerous and disadvantaged places in the world.
The Telegraph: ‘They looked like they were coming out of a concentration camp’
By Raf Sanchez, Middle East Correspondent
For fifteen hours a day, the flow of wounded men, women and children from the remains of Syria’s largest city did not stop. Aleppo residents – evacuated to the safety of the countryside after a six-month siege – came with bones jutting through their skin, limbs succumbing to gangrene and shrapnel still buried in their wounds.
“They looked almost like they were coming out of a concentration camp,” said David Nott, a British surgeon who returned to Britain last week after spending eight days in Syria’s Idlib province treating the injured.
Dr Nott works in operating theatres across three London hospitals but has made repeated medical trips into Syria since fighting started in 2011. He trained many of the doctors who worked in east Aleppo’s makeshift hospitals throughout the regime siege and Russian bombardment and wanted to be there to help when 30,000 civilians and fighters finally left the city in early December under the terms of a ceasefire deal.
Over the course of a frenetic week of surgery, he operated on 90 people, including 30 children. “The patients were really in desperate state” after months with little food and harrowing journey out of the city through snow and freezing temperatures, Dr Nott said.
“They were coming in not just injured but dehydrated, malnourished, and psychologically traumatised.” Doctors in Aleppo focused on saving “lives not limbs” and performed hundreds of rapid amputations with only valium and ketamine to offer their patients for the pain. With no way of sterilising the wounds, the injuries became infected and Dr Nott and his colleagues were sometimes forced to amputate a second time in order to keep people alive.
Read more here.
David Nott: Working in Aleppo
When Abdel Malek was brought into the emergency room in Aleppo in September 2014, his lower left leg was so badly damaged by fragments from a barrel bomb attack that the Syrian doctors thought they would have to amputate the little boy’s foot.
The doctors that remain in Aleppo are passionate and committed but did not have specialist training in vascular, orthopaedic, plastic or reconstructive surgery, understandably given how the war has halted their education and training. I took over the management of the case and was able to show them another way of treating the little boy which would also save his foot.
We took the tiny long saphenous vein from Abdel Malek’s right leg and did a bypass graft to the injured lower leg and foot. The next stage was a cross leg flap to cover the bypass graft. Abdel Malek was kept in this position for three weeks, with his foot elevated and held in place with external fixators, to allow the flap to get its blood supply from the injured leg.
The flap was cut a month later and the legs separated. With the continuing care of the surgeons I trained, Abdel Malek’s foot healed and slowly and steadily, he started to walk again. I was overjoyed when my friends in Aleppo sent me a video on WhatsApp of Abdel Malek playing football with his friends. It demonstrated to me the power of surgery and the options it presents for reconstruction and recovery.
Moments like this were sadly very rare when I was in Syria in September – October 2014. Indiscriminate bombing of civilian areas with grossly destructive barrel bombs – crude devices filled with TNT and shrapnel – caused the most injuries. Day after day, the emergency room and operating theatre were filled with innocent people blown to pieces by these crude devices. Often all we could do was try to ease their pain.
Read the complete blog at: The Hippocratic Post