Chronicle of a Life-saving Partnership: Knock Foundation Brings Surgeons, Equipment to Two Millennium Cities

After four years of working tirelessly with very sick patients and talented colleagues in the Millennium Cities of Kisumu, Kenya, and Mekelle, Ethiopia, the urological surgeons and founders of the Knock Foundation have now published an article, “A Model for Implementation and Sustainability of Urologic Services in the Developing World: Based on the 4-Year Experience of Knock Foundation Urologic Volunteers in Kenya and Ethiopia,” in UroToday International Journal. Year after year — the first two years in Kisumu, then in Mekelle — teams of dedicated, experienced practitioners have spent their vacation time performing complex, often life-saving urological surgeries, working with their local colleagues using the latest surgical techniques, and training them in the use of the containers full of state-of-the-art surgical equipment donated by Knock Foundation.

The responses of the colleagues as well as the patients have been overwhelmingly positive: surgical residents at Mekelle’s Ayder Referral Hospital are thrilled to be equipped now to conduct surgeries and procedures using lasers and other cutting-edge equipment that were unknown to them and absolutely not possible before Knock’s intervention; during their visits to Kisumu, the doctors were able to treat and heal numerous pediatric patients with such intricate urological conditions that there had previously been little hope for their recovery. This spring, the Knock Foundation team will be returning yet again to Kisumu for follow-on training — just to ensure that the knowledge, practice and equipment remain high-quality in the months and years to come.

MCI salutes and offers sincere thanks to the Knock Foundation, its founders and its dedicated surgical teams, whose levels of commitment, compassion, professionalism and unfailing attention to detail have made this now five-year partnership so supremely successful and gratifying — “a model for implementation and sustainability,” indeed.

Read A Model for Implementation and Sustainability of Urologic Services in the Developing World, by Dr. Joel Cornfield, Mark Schacht et al.