Kids Operating Room installs operating rooms and provides specialist training around the world to help save children's lives. Last year, the charity won two Charity Times Awards for its innovative Solar Surgery Programme. Melissa Moody finds out more about its path to success.

How did the idea for Kids Operating Room come about?

I was the CEO of a children’s charity in Scotland and one of our trustees, a surgeon called Professor George Youngson, was in Uganda visiting a hospital. He called me to say he had met the most incredible surgeon who needed our help. Being a Scottish charity focused on local children, we had no remit to do much - so I called one of our patrons, Garreth Wood, and asked him to help. Between the three of us we put the legal framework in place, ran a wide fundraising program and built an operating theatre for children in Uganda. It was meant to be a one-off, but it was so successful, we got asked to do more and more, and pretty soon it became clear this had to be a charity in its own right.

How have things expanded since it formally began in 2018?

It was Garreth who first pressed for this to be a standalone charity and we launched with funding from him and his wife Nicola, so in those early days we were focused on proving the model worked. We wouldn’t send western surgeons - instead we’d give local teams the tools to do the job and we needed to know that was going to work, which thankfully it did. After that, things expanded quickly. We have been able to transition to external funding and demand for our work has never been higher. We’re heading towards our 100th operating theatre, which will mean more than 60,000 children a year access care in our facilities.

We’ve had to get better at maintenance and training local engineers and we’ve had to grow our data monitoring capabilities. But, for the most part, our team have become experts at building hospital infrastructure in more challenging places. In places like Afghanistan, Somalia and Haiti, we have created some amazing spaces for children to access care.

Kids Operating Room won two awards at the Charity Times Awards in 2023 for its solar panel project, can you tell us more about the project?

We quickly realised that no matter how good our infrastructure, a lack of reliable power severely limits the care available. What’s more, medical equipment can be sensitive an prone to being damaged if the power is going on and off all the time.

One of our partners, the Africa Director for Smile Train, also challenged us to come up with a solution to the poor power supply after a number of babies died in a hospital close to where she lived in Nigeria.

Our solution was to create a system that constantly monitors what power the surgical team needs and then supplies it in a way that prioritises renewable sources. So we will install solar panels and they’ll provide direct power while also feeding a battery reserve. The system will seamlessly provide power direct from the sun or a blend of solar and battery back-up to the team without them ever knowing if there is a power cut or not. The local mains is connected to the system too and can be used as a last resort, but Solar Surgery is designed to provide a full day of power and more than six hours of night-time operations before the local grid is needed.

The system was designed for improved patient safety but it has proven to be a highly effective way of reducing carbon production, preventing equipment damage and reducing the hospital’s running cost at the same time.

How did it feel to win the awards?

It was fantastic! The whole team were delighted. It was an endorsement of their hard work, their astonishing dedication to saving lives and of everything they have done over the years to go above and beyond the ordinary and deliver extraordinary results.

What’s next for Kids Operating Room?

We will launch a company called Global Hospital at an event in the Philippines at the end of February. This company is wholly owned by the charity and all profits will go to Kids Operating Room to allow us to continue our important work. Global Hospital will allow us to use our skills and extensive experience in low-resource settings to support other organisations to have the impact they want in these more challenging environments.

All the data suggests that most medical equipment donations are never put to good use, despite the best of intentions from the donors. We’ve seen that firsthand in dozens of countries and it doesn’t need to be that way. Through Global Hospital, we’ll offer a low-cost service that can support any organisation have the impact they want through our network of engineers, our solar options, and project managers.

---