The year of 2024 promises further changes in our plans and priorities for our work in Africa. Several new ventures are in prospect and some significant changes are planned. The increasing plight of the NHS has led to my NHS employers asking me to increase the amount of time I spend engaged in clinical work here in the UK. This will directly impact on my academic work but its a sacrifice that feels necessary, given the difficulty that folk are having with access to adequate clinical care within the NHS. I feel very committed to supporting it and next year will mark my 50th year of training and working for the NHS.

We’ve been very successful academically lately with 28 publications in the last 2 years, and several projects still running. Allowing these to take a back seat for a year won’t be such a miss. Our work on interstitial lung disease is progressing well, and I’m working with national and international organisations on therapeutic guidelines. We’ve published a lot of work lately on pain in autism /ADHD, and are increasingly being asked to contribute to projects and podcasts on this burgeoning topic. The African academic work has produced several publications too, and we’re awaiting the outcome of our bid for further academic funding to allow the University to extend the next medical project to Malawi and Ghana, where I’ve been asked to lead the training again.

From the perspective of our humanitarian work, I will be visiting both our Refugees and our Street Children this September. There are important new developments to report with each project. The south sudanese refugees in Kenya have the opportunity to return to share their knowledge by teaching at our newly built school in Wau, South Sudan. We’ve promised to part-fund this first full year of teaching, until we attract enough pupils to make it self-financing. Our formal opening on September 14th of the ‘Kelly Academy of Hope’ will be the exact date of my father’s 100th birthday. Naming the school in his honour would have made him so proud! We are also supporting Hope House in Kenya throughout 2024 although this is scheduled for closure at the end of the year. Several of our original 38 refugees have excelled academically with scholarships recently awarded to John Maceui (Accountancy in South Africa) and Kur Luke (Law in the USA). It is truly amazing how these young people have managed to achieve such independence only a decade after fleeing armed conflict.

I will also be spending time in Uganda in September with Leah and our street children. Leah has made great progress in establishing firm links with Ugandan Social Services. This has led to discussions around establishing a sustainable program to support the increasing numbers of destitute children on the streets in south east Uganda. Although we continue to house 12 young people (along with our menagerie of goats, chickens and cats), ensuring long term viability and the associated benefits for the wider community of orphaned children remains an absolute essential priority. Kelah House has continued to expand in both acreage, and in personnel. Despite sickness amongst the staff, leading to Leah and Luke both requiring life-saving surgery, we’ve somehow managed to fund an expansion in the number of people we support and the land on which we can grow our own fruit and vegetables. None of this comes cheap!

Our medical trip to Zanzibar last June was very successful and we visited all three main Hospitals on the island of Unguja. We combined morning clinics and ward work with teaching and training junior doctors, nurses and students. I even took Mona, one of our St George’s medical students, along too. Sanjura came over from KCMC to join us too, and we had dinner with Gloria from Moshi. We’ve worked hard to maintain our links with KCMC. As always we were well looked after by Sanaa and her colleagues. However, this years trip to develop clinical services in Pemba / Zanzibar has been delayed because of her other commitments so will be rescheduled as part of the expanded Tanzanian program we hope to resume in 2025. My apologies for the lack of elective opportunities this year for new medical students, although its been great to see so many of my former students thriving, and indeed to be working alongside two of them at James Cook University Hospital presently.

Another recent opportunity to improve prospects for disadvantaged young Africans has come from my new mate Ronan who runs an IT Company that processes big data using a novel mathemathical model. He has offered to train for free several of our young refugees and orphans on line and we’d like to think that this will not just improve their employability, but will also open new opportunities for others in the near future. This program starts imminently. Other priorities include funding a bore hole and pump for our school in Wau but we’re struggling for funding at present. Indeed, we’ve expended £200,000 thus far on the African humanitarian work since its inception in 2017. We remain incredibly grateful for the contributions made by many friends and sponsors