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HEALTH SECTOR NEWS Charity equipping children’s operating rooms


A dedicated team in a ‘hidden hub’ in central Scotland hub is on track to build and ship 30 fully-equipped operating rooms in 2021 alone, all destined for hospitals throughout Africa.


Charity, Kids Operating Room (KidsOR), is reportedly the only global organisation focused on providing dedicated operating rooms for children’s surgery – with its work having already helped save and improve the lives of tens of thousands of children. Its goal is to install 120 paediatric operating rooms across Africa by 2030. Despite the past year’s challenges, the seven-strong team at KidsOR’s Dundee depot have ramped up the curation of the rooms – individually designed by biomedical engineers, working with in- country colleagues, to ensure each aspect meets the long-term needs of local surgeons. Recent months have seen containers delivered to Tanzania, Ivory Coast, Democratic Republic of Congo, Senegal, Zambia, and Nigeria. KidsOR is focusing its efforts on reaching countries with no – or critically low – provision for children’s surgery, where deaths from


A paediatric operating theatre at Charles de Gaulle Hospital in Burkina Faso, post- fitting out by KidsOR.


treatable conditions, or complications following broken bones, are common. Dave Tipping, director of Global Operations, who heads up the Dundee warehouse and lab, is a qualified architect, and spearheads its design and delivery of operating rooms. He said: “We have a singular focus on providing extensively researched and tested rooms that will provide maximum benefit to the recipient hospital, its surgical teams, and thousands of often desperate families. We’ve had to adapt considerably over the past 15 months, with it being much harder, or even


impossible, to get out to the locations where the projects are being delivered. We’re here to ensure that surgeons in the African continent, and those in countries we’ve worked in previously in South America, can utilise each life-saving and life-changing item for the long term.” Also part of the Dundee team is biomedical engineer, Francesca Aras. During the pandemic, she, Dave Tipping, and the team, have made use of the full- scale ‘mock’ operating room within the Dundee warehouse, where staff can test each item of equipment, and provide video-link demonstrations. A typical operating room dispatched will feature over 3000 items, with each requiring quality certification and instruction, and commodity codes, which can be different for each country.


KidsOR, which also has offices in Edinburgh and Nairobi, has a network of engineers and surgeons throughout Africa installing and testing equipment – and providing long-term support to ensure that the rooms operate at their optimum once installed.


‘Blended’ HV electrical course a claimed ‘industry first’ Develop Training is claiming an ‘industry


first’ with the launch of a ‘blended’ training course for workers who handle high voltage electrical systems. The course, ‘Authorised Person: High Voltage (AP15b)’, is the result of research with clients following ‘unforeseen changes’ to course delivery due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Develop Training had transferred a number of its courses to ‘virtual’, online delivery, but has now created a range of ‘blended’ programmes,


comprising a combination of online and in-person learning, as alternatives to its ‘traditional’ courses. The first, the AP15b Authorised Person: High Voltage (Blended) training course, has recently been piloted at its Swindon training centre. Viktors Nikolajevs (pictured), Estates & FM Training manager, said: “It’s been a huge success. The pandemic was no doubt the catalyst for these blended programmes, but the model has certainly


won praise from both our clients, and learners themselves.” Instead of attending over five consecutive days at a Develop training centre, learners now have up to two months to complete a number of online modules – in their


own time – before attending the training centre for just three days. Individual modules are also reduced to a maximum of 30 minutes of online attendance, rather than up to three hours at a training centre.


Airedale Group looks forward to ‘next phase of growth’ Rubicon Partners, a ‘hands-on


investment partnership’ focused on the acquisition and long-term strategic development of complex industrial businesses in Europe and North America, has made a ‘significant investment’ into the Airedale Group, a leading UK specialist in the installation and servicing of catering equipment.


The management team, led by CEO and main shareholder, Rob Bywell, together with Rubicon Partners, have acquired all the Group’s shares. As a result, several minority shareholders, including Rockpool Investments, have sold their stake. Airedale Group’s CEO, Rob Bywell,


said: “This is a significant and exciting step forward for the Group. Over the last seven years, with support from Rockpool, Airedale has solidified its position as the leading kitchen design and installation business in the UK, while simultaneously building a truly national commercial kitchen maintenance platform. The


acquisitions of SCC in 2014, and Flowrite in 2019, have allowed the Group to create an unrivalled maintenance proposition, with a combined total of over 150 national service technicians. “For our next phase we have been looking for a partner with both industry experience and the financial capacity to help us grow to the next level in terms of service offering – both product and technology. We also wanted a partner that could assist us in internationalising this service proposition. Rubicon is an ideal fit, with a history of success in supporting businesses to reach their full potential.”


July 2021 Health Estate Journal 11


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