London children's hospital to give UKM training edge

NST: KUALA LUMPUR: Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia Medical Centre (formerly known as HUKM) is set to establish itself as a training hub for paediatric surgery in the region with its collaboration with the Great Ormond Street Hospital (Gosh) of London.
UKMMC is the first hospital in Asia to have links with the Great Ormond Street Hospital, the leading children's hospital in the world.
The UKMMC and Gosh will share their resources and expertise in training, telemed-icine and multi-centre trials.
The collaboration was facilitated by paediatric laparoscopic surgeon Professor Dr Tan Hock Lim, who is now attached with UKMMC's Deparment of Surgery.
Malaysian-born Dr Tan was the inaugural Professor of Paediatric Surgery at the University of Adelaide, Australia, and had developed the minimally-invasive surgery programme at Gosh.
The collaboration has been enhanced with the appointment of Professor Dr Agostino Pierro, the Nuffield Professor of Surgery from Gosh, as an adjunct professor with UKMMC.
In her opening address at the international Paediatric Surgical Symposium, UKM vice-chancellor Professor Datuk Dr Sharifah Hapsah Syed Hasan Shahabudin said Dr Tan's expertise and UKMMC's collaboration with GOSH would put UKM on the world map as a leading centre for advanced paediatric endoscopic surgery.
She added that the appointment of Dr Pierro as an adjunct professor would also enable UKMMC to conduct multi-centre trials with other institutions such as Gosh.
"I believe that this will open up opportunities for us to develop exchange programmes which will allow overseas clinicians to train their future leaders at UKM, and for the best talents in Malaysia to learn from them."
In line with this, UKM will offer an annual Asean fellowship in paediatric laparoscopic surgery for surgeons from Asean, and an international fellowship for surgeons from the rest of the world to work under Dr Tan.
Dr Tan said establishing links with Gosh would bring significant advantages.
"Gosh has tremendous infrastructure for research and clinicians. When I was working there, I knew that any time I had a problem, I could find somebody who knew something."
Dr Pierro, who was in the country last week to conduct an international paediatric surgical symposium, said Gosh had links with many paediatric hospitals throughout the world such as the Toronto Children's Hospital, the Pittsburgh Children's Hospital and the Los Angeles Children's Hospital and UKMMC would be part of that link.