Duration: 6 hours

0900-1200 & 1400-1700

The David Nott Foundation

The David Nott Foundation was established with a simple mission: To provide medical professionals in conflict zones with the surgical training needed to save more lives. They strive to empower surgical teams in countries affected by conflict to better care for their communities, creating a model of sustainability and independence.

Co-founded and led by renowned British surgeon Professor David Nott, the Foundation’s Teaching Faculty travels to surgically austere regions around the world to deliver their world-class, 5-day Hostile Environment Surgical Training (HEST) course. Since 2015 1,000 doctors have been trained from 30 courses in nations including Somaliland, Palestine, Syria and Ukraine.

The David Nott Foundation will be holding a condensed, one-day HEST course on Thursday 15th December at AfSM Tripartite Conference. The course will cover a wide range of surgical fields such as cardio-thoracic trauma, vascular surgery, neurosurgery, obstetrics and orthopedic surgery.

Faculty biographies

Dr Una Walsh

Dr Una Walsh is a General and Major Trauma Consultant Surgeon at St Mary’s Hospital in London. Dr Walsh joined the David Nott Foundation’s Teaching Faculty in 2021 and led the abdominal and paediatric modules in her first HEST course in Erbil, Iraq, in November. She went on to teach these modules and others in two further HEST courses in Somaliland and Turkey in 2022.

Dr Walsh has previously worked with Sir Magdi Yacoub’s charitable organisation, Chain of Hope, travelling to low- and middle-income countries to provide aeromedical escort for children to sponsor centres for life-saving heart surgeries.

Dr Pete Mathew

Dr Pete Mathew was a consultant neurosurgeon working in the UK and Australia before taking a Diploma in Tropical Medicine and Hygiene in 1999 and training as a trauma surgeon in South Africa.

Following this, he worked as a military surgeon with the British Royal Air Force for ten years and then until the present day as a humanitarian surgeon with the International Committee of the Red Cross and Medicins Sans Frontières. He has been an honorary senior lecturer in anatomy at Dundee University, UK, for over 20 years and joined the David Nott Foundation teaching faculty in 2017.

Dr Ankur Thapar

Dr Thapar is a general, vascular and endovascular surgeon at Mid and South Essex Hospitals and Anglia Ruskin University in the UK.  He spent time working in trauma and vascular units in the UK and Australia and is an Advanced Trauma Life Support and HEST faculty member at the David Nott Foundation.

Dr Thapar won the European Society for Vascular Surgery Gold Medal in 2020 and was nominated as a highly commended trainer for vascular surgery in 2022.  He also has a longstanding interest in teaching surgery and was nominated NHS educator of the year in 2016.  Dr Thapar has worked in South Africa and Ghana, which is where he developed his interest in humanitarian surgery, and his first mission with the Foundation was training medical professionals at the Edna Adan Hospital in Somaliland earlier this year.

Dr Una Walsh

Dr Una Walsh is a general and major trauma consultant surgeon at St Mary’s Hospital in London. Dr Walsh joined the David Nott Foundation’s Teaching Faculty in 2021 and led the abdominal and paediatric modules in her first HEST course in Erbil, Iraq, in November. She went on to teach these modules and others in two further HEST courses in Somaliland and Turkey in 2022.

Dr Walsh has previously worked with Sir Magdi Yacoub’s charitable organisation, Chain of Hope, travelling to low- and middle-income countries to provide aeromedical escort for children to sponsor centres for life-saving heart surgeries.

Dr Pippa Letchworth

Dr Pippa Letchworth is a consultant in obstetrics and gynaecology at Imperial College NHS Trust.  She has a special interest in global maternal health, education and simulation.  As a trainee, she spent two years working for MSF in DRC, Pakistan and Sierra Leone. She then completed a fellowship in education, global health and obstetric fistula.

Dr Letchworth has produced educational videos, with an international reach of over 10 million views, that feature in the David Nott Foundation’s UK HEST course. Prior to her substantive post she worked in northern Nigeria with MSF, in an area with the worst maternal mortality in the world.  Dr Letchworth has worked with the David Nott Foundation since 2012, delivering their UK HEST course and more recently HEST courses in Kenya and Yemen.

(Must be selected with Conference Ticket)