Speakers
GASOC International Conference 2026
We are so excited to announce the amazing speakers that will be joining us at this year's conference!
Professor Nobhojit Roy
Director, WHO Collaborating Centre for Emergency, Critical and Operative care
Prof Roy is Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Emergency, Critical and Operative care, at The George Institute of Global Health’s program for Global Surgery & Trauma, India. He is also the Professor of Surgery and Chair of the Center of Leadership at the University of Global Health Equity at Kigali, Rwanda. Prior to this, he was the global lead for Surgery & Anaesthesia at the WHO Headquarters in Geneva. Roy has been a community surgeon and Professor & Chief of Surgical services for two and half decades, before he moved to NHSRC, the think-tank of the Ministry of Health of India, as the National Advisor, Public Health Planning and Evidence. He has been the Lancet commissioner for Global Surgery (2015) and for NCDs and Injuries in the poorest billion (2020). At the regional level, he was the Southeast Asia Health Hub lead at Oxford Policy Management. His research work is focused on clinical outcomes, health systems and health policy in the low-resources settings.
Retd Squadron Leader Dr. Bhavna Chawla
Retd Sqn Ldr Dr. Bhavna Chawla, a surgeon and Senior Medical
Officer with the International Committee of the Red Cross
(ICRC), recently returned from Rafa Field Hospital in Gaza
wherein she has tenured 7 times since May 2024. An alumnus
of Army Hospital (R&R), New Delhi, she transitioned from being
a specialist in general surgery in the Army Medical Corps in
India to humanitarian global surgery through Médecins Sans
Frontières in 2015 and then the ICRC in 2019. With over 22
deployments in conflict and low- resource settings across South
Sudan, Yemen, Syria, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, Jordan, and
Gaza, she has evolved towards mentorship in War Surgery,
Mass Casualty trainings within the ICRC, has imparted lectures
at the Karolinska institute and has co-authored the second
edition of “Primary Surgery” volume 2, besides other
noteworthy publications addressing the inequities in access to
safe surgery.
