Barbara Jemec

Global Surgery, for me, is about respect and collaboration - about being a friend.  

Helping a colleague provide better patient care locally, and sharing knowledge.  

I therefore established and chaired the British Foundation of International Reconstructive Surgery and Training (BFIRST), which is the official charity of the British Association of Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgeons (BAPRAS), and is the overseas arm of the British Society for Surgery of the Hand (BSSH). 

BFIRST aims to provide training to surgeons, and their teams, in resource-poor countries; to enable relevant reconstructive surgery to be undertaken to an independent level; to involve our partners on an equal footing in international webinars and conferences; and facilitate South-to-South Fellowships. 

The Foundation has projects in: Vietnam, Cambodia, Nepal, Bangladesh, Kenya, Ethiopia, Gambia, Tanzania, Sudan, Nigeria, Guyana, Zimbabwe, and Sri Lanka, covering brachial plexus injuries, congenital hand surgery, burns, ear reconstruction, lower limb reconstruction, vascular malformations, and more. 

The BSSH team has also gone from strength to strength and their major programme is staffing the Lilongwe Institute of Orthopaedics and Neurosurgery in Malawi full time. 

In 2010, I coordinated the British reconstructive surgery response to the Haiti earthquake, sending multidisciplinary teams consisting of anaesthetists, surgeons and nurses for a period of several months, to establish and maintain reconstructive surgery for victims of the disaster. 

I have personally worked in Ghana, Mali, Bolivia, Sierra Leone and Bangladesh and continue to collaborate, both academically and practically, with my colleagues and friends overseas and in 2023, I joined the board of examiners for the College of Surgeons of East Central and Southern Africa in plastic surgery.