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
International Committee of the Red Cross
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.
.jpg)
Barnabas 'Tobi Alayande
Chair, Centre for Equity in Global Surgery
Barnabas ’Tobi Alayande is a general surgeon, Chair of the Centre for Equity in Global Surgery, and Program Director of the Masters in Global Health Delivery, Global Surgery Options at the University of Global Health Equity in Rwanda, and Secretary General of the Pan-African Surgical Healthcare Forum convened by Ministries of Health of African Union Member States. Dr. Alayande’s work focuses on advancing equitable surgical care through medical education, health systems strengthening, research, advocacy, and innovation in low- and middle-income countries, particularly across sub-Saharan Africa.
Joshua S. Ng-Kamstra
Trauma & Acute Care Surgeon, Massachusetts General Hospital | Assistant Professor of Surgery, Harvard Medical School
Joshua S. Ng-Kamstra, MD, MPH is an Assistant Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School and a Trauma and Acute Care Surgeon and Surgical Intensivist at Massachusetts General Hospital. His research focuses on improving access to surgical care for vulnerable populations, implementation science in surgery, and health system resilience. Over the past several years, Dr. Ng-Kamstra has expanded his work to explore the intersection of climate change and surgical care, examining strategies to mitigate healthcare’s environmental footprint and adapt surgical systems to the realities of a changing climate.
.jpg)
Mr Liam Phelan
General Surgery Registrar
Liam Phelan is a general surgery registrar in the West Midlands, UK and a third-year PhD researcher at the Global Surgery Unit, University of Birmingham, supervised by Mr James Glasbey, Dr Dmitri Nepogodiev and Professor Aneel Bhangu. His doctoral work examines preventable postoperative death worldwide, combining evidence synthesis, large-scale prospective cohort data and co-designed intervention development. He has coordinated SurgWeek-2, an international cohort study of surgical outcomes spanning over 130 countries, and contributes to SurgPass, a perioperative safety intervention for critically unwell surgical patients piloted across Africa and South Asia.