Nick trained at Oxford University, Guy’s Hospital, London, and Melbourne, Australia. He is a Consultant Upper GI Surgeon at Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust, and set up the Oxford Oesophagogastric Centre in 1997. Since 2017 Nick has been Cancer Lead for Oxford University Hospitals.
Nick’s main interests are in the surgical management of oesophagogastric cancer and complex benign disease, and he speaks regularly nationally and internationally on these topics. He is President Elect of the Association of Upper GI Surgeons of Great Britain and Ireland, and commences his Presidency in September 2021. He is Clinical Lead for the National Oesophagogastric Cancer Audit.
Nick first visited Palestine in 2008, and since then has travelled each year with fellow Oxford Consultants to Palestine to teach medical students in the West Bank and Gaza. Since 2012 he has led a group of Oxford Consultants specialising in surgery, medicine, paediatrics and obstetrics and spends a week in Gaza each October with students from the Islamic University of Gaza and Al Azhar University. Nick joined the Board of Trustees of IMET2000 in 2016, and has been Chairman of the Board of Trustees from 2018.
Dr. Rebecca Inglis is an intensive care doctor researching ways to improve the care of critically ill patients in low resource settings. She has spent the past three years doing a PhD in Laos with the Oxford Tropical Medicine Network, using low cost simulation and practical, interactive teaching techniques to improve the quality of care.
After obtaining her Diploma of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene in Liverpool, she spent time working for Médecins Sans Frontières in Myanmar and in South America, making teaching videos about infectious diseases. In 2015 she went to Sierra Leone to take part in an Ebola drug trial and she travels to Gaza every year to teach the medical students about trauma management. She has a particular interest in medical education and spent three years working as a Junior Research Fellow at New College, University of Oxford. She has been teaching on the East African and London DTM&H for the past six years and is part of the UK Emergency Medical Team, ready to deploy in case of large-scale international emergencies. She is currently working with the WHO and the Lao Ministry of Health to support the COVID-19 emergency response.
A retired itinerant plastic surgeon who moved to Oxford as a Consultant in 1991 having trained in London initially as a general surgical registrar. Got enthused with the fiddly bits of reconstructive plastic surgery whilst in a holding job before spending two years in a remote Tanzanian mission hospital, and returned to train properly in plastic surgery at Mt Vernon and Roehampton in the late 80’s. During that time, spent a fantastic week at Northwick Park being taught microsurgical technique by Colin Green a never to be forgotten experience. As consultant in Oxford he progressively specialized in cleft lip & palate management, but also oversaw the department he joined with two colleagues grow to its current strength of 27 senior surgeons. Has tried to encourage development of reconstructive surgery in developing health settings, and had long involvement with hospitals in Uganda and latterly east DRC, as well as close links with colleagues in Pakistan and Gaza. These days, he spends a fair amount of time as BAPRAS representative on the Council of the Royal College of Surgeons of England (recently elected as VP of the College for 3 years from July 2020), and President of EBOPRAS the European Board of Plastic Surgery. He is also on the Council and cases committee of the Medical Defence Union, and a trustee of the Blonde McIndoe research foundation. Blessed (or cursed ..?) with a lifelong umbilical cord to Tottenham Hotspur football club (where he managed to secure a season ticket in retirement ..) he also watches cricket at Lords, plays the odd game of real tennis with flailing incompetence, enjoys skiing and fishing in murky Cotswold rivers, and is a passionate listener to choral music and opera. He is deeply honoured to be associated with IMET and excited at the prospect of becoming more involved in coming years.
Sarah Ewans works for Heart n Soul, an award-winning arts charity for learning disabled and autistic people based in South East London. Heart n Soul believes in the power and talents of people with learning disabilities and is an Arts Council National Portfolio Organisation. She is currently associate director for Heart n Soul at The Hub, a multi-disciplinary research and innovation project at Wellcome Collection.
Immediately prior to this, Sarah worked for 4 years in the area of strategy development and planning for Christian Aid and the British Council. For 25 years she worked for the British Council in Bangladesh, Jordan, Nepal, Palestine and the UK. She was director of the British Council in Palestine 2002-2005 and Nepal 1994-1998, and regional director for Near East and North Africa 2005-2009. She was Secretary to the British Council Board and head of the Director General’s office 1998-2002.
Professor Mohammad Sadeghi-Alavijeh (Mo Alavijeh) is a science entrepreneur with over 30 years’ experience in the pharmaceutical industry, having responsibilities as wide-ranging as R&D and innovation, business development and strategic alliances. Since 2002, Mo is the co-founder and currently the Managing Director at Pharmidex. He was previously head of drug metabolism, DMPK/PD at Vernalis Research, before which he was a team leader at Aventis Pharma (Sanofi). Mo is an Honorary visiting Professor at the School Life & Medical Sciences, University of Hertfordshire and a fellow of The Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC) and The Royal Society for Medicine (FRSM). Mo has been a committee member of The Society for Medicines Research since 2008 and a trustee with IMET2000 since 2012.
Dr Omar Abdel-Mannan is a senior paediatric neurology trainee currently working at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London and was previously an NIHR-funded Academic Clinical Fellow at the UCL Institute of Child Health (2014-2017). His main research interests revolve around paediatric neuro-inflammatory and demyelinating conditions and he is pursuing a 1 year Guarantors of Brain research fellowship at the Queens Square MS centre, UCL Institute of Neurology from September 2020. After seeing the devastating effects of the Israeli blockade and bombardment of Gaza in 2009, Dr Abdel-Mannan became involved in building the foundations for an educational link between medical students and doctors at Oxford University and Palestinian medical schools. This has since developed by his successors into OxPAL MEDLINK, a collaborative partnership between students and doctors working at Oxford University and affiliated hospitals, and medical students at Al-Quds Medical School, the Islamic University of Gaza and Al-Azhar University, Gaza(http://oxpal.org/about/). Dr Abdel-Mannan first visited Jerusalem and the West Bank in 2011 and 2012 with the Oxford Teaching Initiative, led by the late Nick Dudley, to promote these educational links and has since travelled to Gaza in 2013 and 2017, teaching Palestinian medical students at the bedside alongside a team of senior physicians and surgeons. He has been a trustee with IMET2000 since 2018.
Dr Hasanen Al-Taiar is an Oxford based consultant forensic psychiatrist is a Senior Member of the Higher Education Academy. He is a RCPsych CASC and a GMC PLAB examiner. He is a partner at the Collaborating Centre for Values Based Practice at St Catherine’s College, Oxford. He’s a trustee at IMET2000 medical education charity and is the new Chair of the South East Division of the Royal College of Psychiatrists and the South of England Mental Health Act Approvals Panel. He is a staff governor at Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust.
He’s a clinical tutor at Oxford University and he’s involved in various educational committees at the Royal College of Psychiatrists.
He published articles on violence risk assessment in addition to some educational literature on assessments in psychiatry. He has undertaken training on assessing and managing individuals with neurodevelopmental and complex psychiatric disorders. He has published many audits in various avenues of psychiatry. His work has been cited on the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE). One of his ambitions is to raise the awareness, build professional capacity and set up specialised forensic psychiatry services in many countries which provide specialist mental health input to mentally unwell offenders.
Kathy qualified as a registered nurse in 1993 and has worked in various specialties within the NHS including infectious diseases, cardio thoracic and community nursing. She now works as a community matron in Surrey and has a particular interest in palliative care. She accompanied her father Colin Green to attend the opening of Herona Hospital in Uganda in 2018. Since then she has worked with IMET2000 to help supply the hospital with a large quantity of medical equipment and supplies. In January 2020 she sent a large container full of equipment from the UK. She also helped to raise funds to buy an ambulance for the hospital which is frequently in use bringing emergency cases to Herona and also delivering health care in the community. She is now hoping to set up online learning programmes for the clinical staff in areas such as basic life support and infection control.
After graduating with a degree in Comparative Law (specialising in international law) from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), Perihan Bassatne has carved out a highly successful career in the charity sector and is best described as a philanthropic advisor-activist. She has focused for over 20 years on medical training and research and on women and children’s health, welfare and human rights globally but particularly in the Middle East and other conflict zones. For example, she is keen on changing the lives of women around the world suffering from sexual or physical violence in conflict areas. She is actively involved with Women for Women (www.womenforwomen.org.uk), promoting and hosting events for them and sponsoring women survivors of war. In 2017, Perihan visited the refugee camps in Lebanon and met with Syrian and Palestinian families there to see the work Habitat for Humanity recently started doing in the Middle East (www.habitat.org) and to look into how best to help the refugees and their host communities. In addition, she has been an active executive committee member of Give a Child a Brighter Future since 2001 (www.giveachild.org), helping organise and source products for their annual Christmas bazaar and setting up their website, database and social media platforms. Perihan Bassatne is also a patron of the arts and sits on the board of Tate‘s MENAAC (Middle East and North Africa Acquisitions Committee); she joined from when they were first established in 2010 and continues to help cultivate and expand on their Middle East and North African art collection. The many other charities that have benefitted from her advice and active support is too long to list here but it demonstrates huge compassion for those less fortunate.
Colin Green has particular cause to be grateful for Perihan’s loyal support. Before she joined the IMET 2000 Board of Trustees when we opened in 2000, she helped him with great generosity both in funding and much needed encouragement to set up the Northwick Park Institute for Medical Research (NPIMR) and support pioneering research in burns, wound healing and tissue engineering. Even before that, she supported him when he was Director of the Blond McIndoe Centre carrying out research on burns and reconstructive surgery and helping him in his work in Russia and South Africa building children’s burns units and skin banks. Her contribution to IMET2000 (together with her husband, family and his company BB Energy Ltd) has been immense.
Professor Barry Fuller is a member of the Division of Surgery and Interventional Science at UCL and has spent his career working in organ and tissue transplantation. He has shared his time between the transplant services at the Royal Free London NHS Trust in north London and teaching and research in UCL. His work has focused on low temperature medicine which is an important part of the transplant pathway, and has always been keen on international medical education to share knowledge and improve patient outcomes across the world. He became a leading professor in the UNESCO Chair in Cryobiology (applications of low temperatures) in 2008 working with organisations in Former Soviet States, notably Ukraine, African countries and the Americas. He was elected to Fellow of the International Society for Cryobiology and Ukraine Academy of Sciences. He enjoys family life, being put in place by grandchildren, walking dogs and swimming on the Norfolk coast. He has been a Trustee of IMET2000 since the beginning in 2000 and Company Secretary since 2008.
Rebecca Shipley is a mathematician and professor of healthcare engineering at University College London (UCL). She is Director of the UCL Institute of Healthcare Engineering and Vice Dean (Health) for the UCL Faculty of Engineering Sciences. In these roles, she coordinates interdisciplinary research activities within healthcare engineering across Engineering, SLMS and the UCL Partner Hospitals at UCL.
She is co-director of the UCL Centre for Nerve Engineering, the first Centre in the UK to bring together engineering and physical sciences with the life and clinical sciences to tackle translational nerve engineering problem. Rebecca was also awarded an EPSRC Hub for Mathematical Sciences in Healthcare, to set up a new research Centre at UCL to bring together mathematical, statistic, engineering and computational sciences approaches to develop new data-driven models of human physiology, and use them to inform clinical design making in intensive care. She is also a Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology.
Her research is divided into three key themes: cancer growth and response to therapy, nervous system tissue engineering, and data-driven learning of physiological models in intensive care patients.
In 2020, Rebecca co-led an interdisciplinary team UCL Ventura to develop life-saving breathing aids for COVID-19 patients. The project was a collaboration between UCL mechanical engineers, UCLH doctors and Mercedes-AMG HPP (Formula 1). The team manufactured 10,000 devices which are now in use in over 60 NHS hospitals. They have made the designs available at no cost to over 1900 teams in 105 countries and are now supporting international manufacture and distribution.
We are delighted and consider ourselves very lucky to welcome Dr Helen Crawley to our IMET2000 Board of Trustees. Her many years as a General Practitioner (GP) and her international reputation in education and training in Primary Health Care (PHC) and family medicine will be of enormous value to our global mission based fundamentally on PHC. Her career has been stellar and her influence not just in the UK but overseas especially in low-resource countries has been of great importance to this discipline. Helen has been a GP since 1989 and GP trainer from 1996-2014 with a diploma in education. She served four years on the Oxford Deanery Education Subcommittee. From 2017 to 2021 she was International Medical Director for the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP)and was widely regarded as a great success in that important role. Nor has she restricted her interests to physicians but has set up and delivered many courses for qualified nurses and pharmacists in the UK. She was lead in evaluation for the RCGP support programme for struggling general practices in special measures. Helen has Board level experience as a clinical Non-Executive Director of an acute hospital trust. She is currently since July 2021 setting up an International Mentoring Partnership Scheme for the charity Tropical Health and Education Trust (THET which was started many years ago by Professor Sir Eldryd Parry who was another of our Trustees for years until quite recently). Her international work has entailed travelling to many countries in Africa, Middle East and Asia. This much abbreviated synopsis of her career and many achievements shows just how closely her skills match our ambitions as a charity. We thank her for joining us.