Meet Rali Mampeule: Magoebaskloof local behind global surgery fund for the poor #WEF20

It is estimated that over 5 billion people globally and 90% of the world’s poor do not have access to surgery which often leads to preventable deaths. It has prompted a South African businessman, Rali Mampeule to become a founder of a Global Surgery Foundation that was launched  at the 2020 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Mampuele told Biznews that his involvement in the Global Surgery Foundation, which now has UN backing stems from tragic circumstances involving his twin sister. We also spoke to one of the CEOs of the foundation, Dr Geoffrey Ibbotson who is a surgeon that has decided to put his weight behind this drive to prevent people from dying because they could not get what is often regarded as basic operations. – Linda van Tilburg

This coverage of the global conversation on change is brought to you by BrightRock the first ever needs matched life insurance that changes as your life changes. Rali Mampeule, please tell me a bit of your background.

I was born in a beautiful village of Modjadji and like most of us we all go to the urban area to go look for opportunities. My parents and I ended up staying close to Benoni and then I moved on to study at the University of South Africa where I did my business degree. I then had an opportunity to get closer to Charles Everett – the owner of Chas Everitt – the international property group and they groomed me for real estate. I studied as an assistant estate agent doing drops all over Johannesburg and I grew it to become the first black owned realty franchise in South Africa. To cut a long story short, we’ve launched an affordable housing fund in South Africa, which is helping to accelerate the delivery of affordable housing.

Tell me about your personal experience. What happened that prompted you to get involved with the Global Surgery Foundation?

My younger sister – who’s a twin sister – had just been removed from my parents medical aid, my mum was a teacher, she was pregnant and about to deliver a baby. My mom called me to ask if I could help to get my sister into a private hospital. At that time I was busy in meetings and because I could not get back to her to help her with resources for her to go to private hospitals, my sister lost the baby and her life. I was also not aware of the surgery challenges that are happening in the world and when I met with the GSF, I became aware of this and as an entrepreneur – we just sold one of the businesses – what was important to me was to get involved and plough back the money and I became the founding donor of the GSF.

So you are the founding donor. Is there any international body behind this as well?

Yes. I used to do a lot of commercial real estate – shopping centres and office blogs – but there was a need and a crisis in South Africa to start building affordable housing. When I sold part of the business that I used to do commercial properties, we obviously had resources and the timing was great for us to be able to look at different initiatives. We’ve done an initiative back home where we’re helping students with their studies and we bring new blood into the real estate industry by training youngsters in industry, but this health division was part of what was very close to my heart – for my wife and I – and the timing was just great for us to be able to to become the founding doner of this wonderful initiative that it’s going to change people’s lives. A lot of people are struggling to save their lives and where there’s an option for a simple operation – and just to give you an example – where a woman is pregnant, and they’re not able to turn the baby around so they’re not able to deliver a child in the natural way, the one solution is to do a caesarean. There are people that cannot afford that and sometimes end up losing the baby and sometimes their own lives. So it’s a very important space. As the Rali Makentse Mampeule Foundation, we looked at it from a personal family history viewpoint where we experienced this type of difficulty. It just made sense for us to be able to contribute to this and to help make a difference to Africa, specifically in terms of a global surgery concept.

The surgeon that is involved in the project is Dr. Geoffrey Ibbotson. He’s now the executive director of the Global Surgery Foundation.

I just want to say that this is not a singular effort. It’s not just me. It’s a team of surgeons leaders – from around the world – including Harvard, some from Africa and there’s a very good surgeon from the University of Witwatersrand who’s based in Zambia, so there’s a whole team of people who’ve come together and they’re calling for a common platform to help upscale capacity to provide surgical services to all people.

You may ask a question why? Well most people don’t understand or don’t know that over five billion people in the world today do not have access to even the most basic surgical services – that includes c-sections, if your child gets appendicitis, if your child breaks their arm – they can’t get it fixed. What does this mean? They either die or they are massively disabled. That could plunge them further into poverty. In the poorest countries of the world 90% of the world’s poor do not have any access. The economic implications of this are huge. The Lancet Commission on Global Surgery – that occurred back in 2015 – revealed some shocking data with all these numbers and one of the numbers that came out, is that if we do not make a difference in surgery, particularly in the emerging markets in Africa and Asia, the world will stand to lose $12trn of economic output by the year 2030. That is a massive amount that we can’t afford to lose.

We can talk about the numbers, but like Rali’s Sister, there is a face behind every case and every patient and we don’t want to forget that. So the Global Surgery Foundation came together at the invitation of the United Nations assistant secretary general Nikhil Seth, who is the executive director of UNITAR, which stands for United Nations Institute for Training and Research. We are a UN hosted agency, we are a common platform, working with multiple universities around the world and now we’re looking for industry and more philanthropy to come into the game and support this effort. We’re working with partners on the frontlines, like an organisation called Kids Zohar that puts operating rooms specifically for children with the right instruments and the right equipment. These just aren’t there and these these kids die. This is the future of Africa the future of the world – these children – and if we can’t treat them properly, where is our future going.

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