Cairo – Ashraf Abo Arafe
London’s Royal Brompton and Harefield Hospitals have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to establish a strategic partnership with Ain Shams University Hospital, one of the largest educational medical institutions in Africa and the Middle East.
Under the agreement, Royal Brompton and Harefield Hospitals will prepare and deliver a service review and development plan for a heart and lung surgery service to be set up at Ain Shams University Hospital, and conduct joint research.
The aim of the strategic partnership is to promote training, clinical practice and research to enhance and empower clinical programmes at Ain Shams. This service review will specifically aim to develop and deliver an exceptional and sustainable aortic surgery service at Ain Shams.
Employing a multidisciplinary approach with clinical care, education and research excellence at its core, the Royal Brompton & Harefield Hospital team will work with their Ain Shams partners to develop a world class heart and lung service at the hospital.
A delegation of senior British physicians and clinical managers from Royal Brompton and Harefield Hospitals have arrived in Egypt for a visit this week to sign the joint research agreement and commence the first stages of the partnership.
British Ambassador to Egypt Sir Geoffrey Adams said: “I am delighted that Ain Shams University Hospital is partnering with Royal Brompton and Harefield Hospitals, which together form the largest heart and lung centre in the UK. This agreement will enable two outstanding institutions to join forces in delivering a world-class cardiac service to Egyptian citizens.”
Royal Brompton & Harefield Hospitals Managing Director of Private Patients, Mr David Shrimpton, said: “Royal Brompton & Harefield Hospitals are looking forward to working with colleagues at Ain Shams University Hospital to build upon their specialised cardiac services. We look forward to a successful partnership between our two institutions and hope this can lead to further productive collaborations in the future.”
Royal Brompton & Harefield Hospitals cardiac surgeon, Professor John Pepper, said: “We are delighted to collaborate with our Ain Shams colleagues in order to provide the very best in specialist cardiac services to the people of Egypt.”
* About Royal Brompton & Harefield Hospitals!
Royal Brompton & Harefield NHS Foundation Trust is the UK’s largest specialist centre for the treatment of heart and lung disease. Working from two sites, Royal Brompton Hospital in Chelsea, West London, and Harefield Hospital, near Uxbridge, the Trust has an international reputation for the expertise of its staff, high standard of care and research success. Experts at the Trust help patients from all age groups who have heart and lung problems and provide some of the most complex surgery and sophisticated treatments available anywhere in the world.
The Trust is the UK’s largest centre for the treatment of adult congenital heart disease and is the country’s leading provider of specialist respiratory care. Over the years the Trust has been responsible for major medical breakthroughs, such as the UK’s first combined heart and lung transplant. It established the UK’s first adult service for cystic fibrosis, which is now one of Europe’s biggest treatment centres for the condition, and has pioneered the use of primary angioplasty for the treatment of heart attacks. Today the Heart Attack Centre at Harefield has one of the fastest arrival-to-treatment times in the UK, a crucial factor in patients’ survival.
