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Dr Tom Bashford, 32, from London, recently won the Patient Safety Award from the Association of Anaesthetists of GB and Ireland, for his work promoting safe surgery while working as a VSO volunteer doctor in Ethiopia. He spoke recently of a “moral obligation” to support developing countries with UK-trained medical professionals.
 
Dr Bashford , an Anaesthetist, recently returned to the UK after a year working in Yekatit 12 hospital in Addis Ababa as a VSO volunteer. His role entailed sharing simple, life-saving skills and practices with the hospital team: setting up a High Dependency Unit; introducing the globally-recognised WHO Safe Surgery Checklist; and training staff to use life-saving equipment which had been donated but they did not know how to use. He left behind a team who had the skills to keep patients alive through surgery and crucially, who could train the next staff intake to do the same.

Dr Bashford said:
"I've seen how much benefit a trained UK health worker can bring in just one year in Ethiopia. I feel there’s a kind of moral obligation on countries with so many trained health professionals to support and encourage them to volunteer overseas.

"I gained my medical skills in the UK and I'll almost certainly spend my whole career looking after people in Britain. But there's such a desperate need for these skills in poorer countries like Ethiopia. I wish more people could give up a year to share what they know. I've seen what a lasting difference it can make."

There are fewer anaesthetists in the whole of Ethiopia, a country of 85 million people, than in the London hospital where Dr Bashford had been working. Ethiopia currently has one anaesthetist for every 5.3 million people.
 
One problem that Dr Bashford identified was that patients were dying or suffering brain damage on the wards because their oxygen levels were dropping and over-stretched staff weren’t spotting this until it was too late. In the UK, pulse oximeters, simple devices that clip on the finger and measure how much oxygen is in the blood, are used routinely. Dr Bashford found despite having been donated the necessary equipment, many of the staff needed training in how to use it effectively. He said:

“Part of our role as long-term volunteers is that you can take these things out of the cupboard, you can confidently explain to people how they’re used, how they can work, and how they can benefit their patients. And then you can support that use over a number months until they come completely routine and as useful to them as they are to us at home.”

Dr Richard Griffiths, Honorary Secretary of the AAGBI, said:

“One of the aims of the AAGBI is to enhance patient safety internationally. We believe that volunteering provides an important opportunity to promote and reinforce safe practice, and also benefits the NHS through  development of leadership skills, improved team working and experience in resource management. Dr Bashford is a very deserving recipient of this award.”

VSO UK’s Head of Volunteering, Emily Lomax, said:

“VSO’s health programmes, in 21 of the world’s poorest countries, rely on people like Tom Bashford - doctors, nurses and midwives - giving their time to work alongside local health workers and our partner organisations. They’re helping to bring sustainable benefits to health systems that have a long-term impact on people’s lives.”

Editor's notes

Notes to editors:
High-resolution professional pictures of Dr Tom Bashford at work in Ethiopia’s Yekatit 12 hospital are available from the VSO media team.

About VSO:

VSO is different from most organisations that fight poverty. We bring people together to share skills and knowledge and, in doing so, we create lasting change. Our volunteers work in whatever fields are necessary to fight the forces that keep people in poverty – from education and health through to helping people learn the skills to make a living. In doing so, they invest in local people, so the impact they make endures long after their placement ends. We’re also focused on gender equality and, increasingly, climate change. And we help poor people to get their messages heard, gathering public support and advising influential decision‐makers.

For further information please contact:
Susannah Taw, VSO media team, Tel. 020 8780 7621, mobile: 07500 918478.