 MARCH 2025
 
Urolink are also delighted to announce this month that Mary Suphi, BAUS CEO, and the team at BAUS have registered the BAUS charity on the 'Just Giving' platform to facilitate donations to help with Urolink's activities. If you are doing anything to raise donations for Urolink, and want to GiftAid the donations, then you can do that by clicking the link here, or the button to the right of this message. Please copy the banner above into the comments box, to ensure that the donation is recognised as being aimed specifically to support Urolink!
MARCH 2025
Urolink are very pleased to announce Danielle Whiting’s appointment as the next Secretary of Urolink. Danielle, consultant at Frimley Park Hospital, has a long-standing interest in international development and global health having chaired an international development charity, working in central America, Ghana and Greece, which focussed on holistic, community-led, sustainable development. She was awarded a TUF fellowship in 2023, which she used to participate in a PCNL workshop at KCMC in Tanzania, thereby combining her clinical interests with Urolink’s aims. Danielle is a staunch advocate of Urolink’s ethos in mentored training and is keen to encourage UK trainees to gain experience of working in LMICs. She is co-chairing the Urolink session at this year’s BAUS Annual Scientific Meeting after which she will take over from Steve Payne.
MARCH 2025
 Brendan Berry and Mayur Gami accompanied Suzie Venn,  Tamsin Greenwell and Nikesh Thiruchelvam to Malawi in February as part of their TUF, and Cambridge Global Health Partnership, Fellowships. By the end of their visit, Malawian colleagues had successfully developed competence in performing basic urodynamics, urethral bulking, rectus fascial slings and clam cystoplasty, marking significant progress, However, long-term sustainability depends on the continued identification and management of appropriate patients, as well as the ability of local surgeons to integrate these newly learnt techniques into their already demanding workloads.
Read Brendan's report
FEBRUARY 2025
 Suzie Venn ran the Kilimanjaro Half Marathon in February to raise funds for two African female surgeons who are about to take their final COSECSA FCS exams. There are very few female surgeons in LMICs, and the journey to becoming one is even more difficult than in the UK as the costs associated with attending these exams are often beyond the reach of many promising female surgeons. With donations via Crowdfunding, Suzie hopes to give them these women the opportunity to finish their training, continue to make a real difference in their communities and become role models for future generations of women aspiring to take up a surgical career. It’s not too late to donate, so if you feel you want to contribute to this noble effort hit this link to
Suzie’s Crowdfunding pageView Suzie’s efforts here!
FEBRUARY 2025
Ram Subramaniam recently returned from another hypospadias workshop in Lilongwe where he continued to help mentor Charles Mabedi and Amaryllis Mapurisa. Ram's report demonstrates just how far our colleagues in Malawi have come in th provision of complex uro-genital surgery in the paediatric population. The message, below, from Charles says everything you need to know about what Ram has achieved during the last 3 years! Well done, all of you for such fantastic progress!
Ram's report from Lilongwe, January 2025
Charles' and Amaryllis' letter from Lilongwe
FEBRUARY 2025
 Urolink supported Orgeness Mwambo from KCMC in Moshi, Tanzania, to travel to Harare in Zimbabwe in December of last year so that he could take part in the COSECSA FCS exams, but also so that he could be part of the organising committee for the first Paediatric urological workshop, which was held the day before the exams started. Together with an international panel, Orgeness was part of the faculty that delivered a wide-ranging programme to 28 participants who apart from discussing clinical issues were able to consider specialist training for paediatric urology, something that is desperately needed in sub-Saharan Africa as well as other LMICs across the world.
2024 paediatric urology workshop. Read Orgeness' report from his supported visit
DECEMBER 2024
Mary Brown, Steve Payne and Suzie Venn travelled to Harare,  Zimbabwe, for the COSECSA FCS (Fellowship) clinical exams. After arriving from different points on the globe, there was a formal briefing of the purpose of the exams and a standard setting meeting of an international group of examiners from 7 countries, before the exam the following day. Although there were no clinical cases, the exam covered a substantial amount of the COSECSA urology syllabus. All 5 candidates were successful and Nakavizya Janet Nshinka, from Ndola, won the gold medal for the best overall performance in the written and clinical tests. Many congratulations to her and all of the candidates presenting for this prestigious award.
2024 COSECSA FCS exam report from Harare
NOVEMBER 2024
Read Suzie Venn's report of the trip she and Paul Anderson made to KCMC in Tanzania in November to upskill the local team in reconstructive surgery. There were some particularly challenging cases for Paul to address with Nc Ngowy, whilst Suzie helped upskill the rest of the team by helping mentor their taking of buccal mucosal grafts. In all, a very successful week with 15 cases being completed.
Suzie's report from the workshop
NOVEMBER 2024
  Read reports from Steve Payne's scoping visit to St. Paul's Hospital in Addis Ababa, Will Finch's and Matt Trail's stone workshop in Hawassa, and Shekhar Biyani's Emergency Urology Bootcamp carried out in association with colleagues from the Urology Society of Ethiopia (USE) in November 2024.
Prof. Masresha Soloman has clarified how Urolink can help in Addis, Matt and Will carried out 11 PCNLs in 4 days and Shekhar's siumulation-based bootcamp taught 11 residents how to manage common urological surgical emergencies. Both Will and Matt have written about how mid-career and early years consultants can help with Urolink projects.
Steve's scoping report Hawassa PCNL workshop report Will's mid-career Urolink experience
Matt's new consultant Uroink experience Report from the 1st Emergency Urology Bootcamp
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