Our People

Prof Kokila Lakhoo

Fellow, Ordinary Fellow

Professor of Global Paediatric Surgery

Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences

PhD (University of Witwatersrand); FRCS (Edin+Eng), FCS (Paed), MRCPCH, MBBCH (University of Natal)

Professor Kokila Lakhoo is Professor of Global Paediatric Surgery in the Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences at the University of Oxford, and a consultant paediatric surgeon at the Oxford Children’s Hospital.

Besides general paediatric surgery and ambulatory surgery her special interests are: global health, fetal counselling, neonatal surgery, paediatric tumour surgery, paediatric thoracic surgery and specialist gastrointestinal surgery. Her efforts over the past 25 years have been largely focused on improving paediatric surgery locally, nationally, and internationally in LMIC countries such as Tanzania. She achieves this via teaching, training, collaborative research, and standard setting. She has led multiple organisations, chaired committees, advisory boards and represented children’s surgery for non-governmental organisations and parent support group.

Kokila is the past president of Global Initiative for Children’s Surgery (GICS), which she co-founded after the Lancet commission to address LMIC needs in children’s surgery in a safe and affordable manner; and Chair of the International Affairs Committee, British Association of Paediatric Surgeons (BAPS).

Professor Lakhoo is the editor of four books, including a recent joint venture with her African colleague as editor of the text book Paediatric Surgery: a comprehensive text for Africa (Global-Help publishers). She has to date contributed 71 chapters to paediatric surgical text books and has over 300 peer reviewed publications.

In March 2026, Professor Kokila Lakhoo was awarded the Denis Browne Gold Medal for lifetime contributions to paediatric surgery.