Who we are

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The Kambia Appeal is a UK-registered charity and a registered international NGO working in Sierra Leone, West Africa. We are based in Cheltenham in Gloucestershire and have a permanent office and residence in Kambia Town. Our charitable objective is to improve health in Kambia District by supporting the Sierra Leone Government health services run by the Kambia District Health Management Team (KDHMT).

Members of the Kambia District Health Management Team and The Kambia Appeal, February 2012

Our Board

Richard Kerr-Wilson

Richard was a consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist working for the Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust until he retired in April 2011. He is a founding trustee of the Kambia Appeal since 1992, working in partnership with Kambia Hospital in Sierra Leone. In the past he has worked in the United States and briefly in Nepal, as well as lecturing and examining in Hong Kong, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, South Africa and Sudan.

Shona Lockyer – Chair

Shona worked as Grant Manager for a UK Charitable Trust, part of a Financial Services Company, which at the time was the 10th largest corporate donor in the UK.  Shona was responsible for fund raising throughout the national branch network as well as the payment of grants to both national and international charities. Shona also owns a successful retail business, selling online primarily, she also manages a local residents’ company.

Terry Smith – Treasurer

Terry obtained a Degree in Physics at Oxford before commencing a career in public sector finance.  Terry qualified as an accountant with the Chartered Institute of Public Finance & Accountancy (CIPFA) in 1978.

Terry worked in NHS Finance for 20 years, including 12 years as a Director of Finance.  This latter period saw both the merger of countywide acute services to form Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Trust and that organisation subsequently becoming one of the first in the country to achieve NHS Foundation Trust status. In his last year before retirement he was responsible for a budget of c£430m. Terry retired in 2009 and became Treasurer of the Kambia Appeal in June 2010.

David Holmes

David retired from his post as a consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist in Gloucestershire NHS Foundation Trust in April 2014.  He has been involved with the Kambia Appeal since its inception as a mentor, course organiser and speaker/fund raiser.  He has significant “in country experience” having worked as a reproductive health advisor for Save the Children in the Kerrytown Ebola Treatment Centre during the Ebola crisis and has also organised courses for “Life for African Mothers”, a West African centred charity.

Angela Page

Angela qualified as a Doctor from Manchester University in 2013 and will be completing her GP training at the end of January 2020 in Bristol. During GP training, she gained her diploma in sexual and reproductive medicine. Prior to medical training she worked as an Auxiliary Nurse at the Great Western Hospital.

Aside from work, she has volunteered in Sierra Leone, where she assisted in a clinic for a charity named Street Child, and has had a placement in Kisiizi Hospital, South West Uganda, where she gained experience of medicine in a rural settling. She has also volunteered for 4 months for the Ryder-Cheshire Foundation in India prior to her university training.

Miles Wagstaff

Miles has been a consultant paediatrician at Gloucestershire Royal Hospital since 2003, having trained in the UK and Australia. Prior to becoming a consultant he had worked and taught as a medical student in central Africa and the South Pacific, and gone on to spend some time working for a charity in the Caribbean. He has been fortunate to visit Sierra Leone four times since 2014, initially delivering neonatal and paediatric teaching with the Kambia Appeal, and more recently developing and delivering a paediatric refresher teaching programme for nurses, CMOs and doctors working in Kambia for the EBOVAC programme in 2019 and 2020.

Our Staff in Sierra Leone

  • Moses Kabba – Project Manager, Sierra Leone

Registered UK Charity No. 1172123

History of The Kambia Appeal

The Kambia Appeal was founded in July 1992, following a request for support from a charity worker from Kambia during a visit to Cheltenham. Between 1992 and 1999 the Appeal provided help for the Kambia Government Hospital in the form of training for staff, equipment, regular drugs supplies and a number of motorbikes to enable doctors and nurses to reach villages. The Rotary Club also provided money for a Landrover.  The Appeal’s work was resourced through fundraising events like concerts, donations and two Comic Relief grants.

In February 1999, during the Sierra Leone civil war, the Kambia Hospital was attacked, looted and burnt by rebels, and needed to be completely rebuilt. Everything was destroyed. Doors, windows, roofs, beds and equipment were all burned.  Peace was declared in 2001, and in 2004 the hospital was re-opened, after rehabilitation by the European Union.  In 2005, The Kambia Hospital Appeal renewed its programme to improve maternal health with a community education film called Belleh Woman, Go Di Right Side.

Since then, The Kambia Appeal has focused its efforts on identifying and addressing the causes of maternal and child mortality, following the guidelines and policies of the Sierra Leone Ministry of Health and Sanitation and the Sustainable Development Goals.

See newspaper clippings from 1992 reporting on the first visit to Kambia by Richard Kerr-Wilson, Godfrey and Pauline Taylor here.

The Kambia Appeal Annual Report 2021 can be downloaded here.