Nizam Mamode

Nizam Mamode (born 1962) is a British professor of transplantation surgery. Until 2020 he was clinical lead of transplant surgery for adults and children at Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust and honorary consultant at Great Ormond Street Hospital. He is best known for leading the operation that used 3D printers to plan a transplant of a living-donor kidney from a father into his two year old daughter in 2015. The following year he led the team that performed the United Kingdom's first robot assisted kidney transplant via keyhole surgery. In 2017 he performed one of the UK's first paired kidney transplants in a child.

After A-levels Mamode worked in Kenya with Project Trust as a volunteer teacher and co-founded a school. He subsequently studied medicine in Scotland, completing his pre-clinical course at St Andrews University and his clinical years at Glasgow University in 1987. In 1998 he was deputy chairman of the British Medical Association's (BMA) committee for newly qualified doctors, then chairman of its negotiating committee, and later elected deputy chairman of the BMA's Central Consultants and Specialists Committee.

In 2016 Mamode appeared in Stephen Daldry's 2016 Netflix series The Crown, playing the lead surgeon Sir Clement Price Thomas in a simulation of the 1951 lung operation on King George VI.

Early life and education Nizam Mamode was born in 1962 in Britain to a Mauritian father and English mother. Following several rejections from medical schools and after his A-levels, he took a gap year with Project Trust and worked as a teacher in Nairobi, Kenya. In January 1981, at the age of 18, with a local teacher he co-founded a school for children in the small village of Igoji in Meru County, Kenya. There, he saw the effects of small arms and as result signed up to the Million Faces petition which called for stricter international controls on arms. In 1998, he was working as a specialist registrar in vascular surgery at Glasgow Royal Infirmary. At that time he also served as deputy chair of the BMA’s committee for newly qualified doctors. In this role, he contributed to securing a pay agreement designed to reduce working hours and improve compensation for antisocial working patterns, resulting in pay rises for most newly qualified doctors. In 2000 he gained his MD from Glasgow, and received his FRCS. He moved to London in 2002. In March of that year he was appointed consultant in transplant surgery, In 2004 Mamode spent time in Minnesota, USA, learning to use the da Vinci Surgical System.

Between 2008 and 2011 Mamode was chairman of the chapter of surgeons, at the British Transplantation Society. Other roles included being on the advisory board of the Confidential Reporting System in Surgery (CORESS), to promote safety in surgical practice.

Later career In 2014 Mamode was appointed clinical lead of transplant surgery for adults and children at Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust (GSTT) and honorary consultant at Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH). It allowed for his team to play around with the model with a view to how to close the abdomen.

In September 2016 using a da Vinci robot under the guidance of Ahmedabad's professor of transplant surgery Pranjal R. Modi, Mamode led the team that performed the UK's first robot assisted kidney transplant via keyhole surgery. The following year he performed one of the UK's first paired kidney transplants in a child. He was one of 11 transplant surgeons employed by GSTT, and was one of five surgeons who carried out transplants in children at the Trust's Evelina Children's Hospital (ECH). Later, Judge Murdin would describe him as having "an international reputation for paediatric transplantation" who "received referrals from across the UK and beyond".

From October 2022 to May 2023, Mamode worked on establishing a transplant programme in Mauritius.

Mamode volunteered with Medical Aid for Palestinians in Gaza from mid-August to mid-September 2024. While working at Nasser Hospital, he treated victims of Israeli drone strikes and testified before the UK Parliament about the deliberate targeting of civilians, especially children. Mamode described regularly operating on children who had been shot by hovering drones while lying on the ground after bombings, highlighting the severe conditions faced by children and healthcare workers in Gaza.

The Crown

Following advice from surgeons Harold Ellis and Pankaj Chandak, Mamode appeared as Sir Clement Price Thomas, the lead surgeon, in Stephen Daldry's 2016 Netflix series The Crown (first episode), in which he and his team showed how King George VI's cancerous lung was removed at Buckingham Palace in 1951.

Selected publications Articles

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