Sohel Ahmed

We recently caught up with safer surgery advocate Dr Sohel Ahmed, former President of the Sudanese Doctors Union of Ireland (SDUI) to discuss the organisation’s work in supporting anaesthesia providers in the country, and this is what we learned.

What motivated you to collaborate with Lifebox?

My colleagues and I formed SDUI with an important mandate to assist medical professionals back home in delivering quality health services by improving their knowledge and access to equipment. What better way to do this than through the distribution of Lifebox pulse oximeters which are robust, durable and made to respond to the challenges faced by physicians working in low-resource settings such as unreliable power supply.

What does safer surgery mean to you?

Having practiced medicine in both developing and developed countries, I have experienced first-hand the huge difference monitoring makes to surgical outcomes. Put simply it is the difference between operating in the dark versus light. It is life-saving!

What sorts of activities did you undertake to fundraise?

SDUI has been fundraising in a number of ways such as holding bake sales, selling paintings, organising stands at social gatherings, also via email and our website.

Seeing the Lifebox fund grow from day to day and having more people engage with us gives us great strength to continue, and we will not stop until every operating room in Sudan has a pulse oximeter!

Earlier this year we raised over 3,000 Euros for our work in Sudan, thanks to the support of SDUI members, colleagues and friends.