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 as a teacher in Nairobi, Kenya. There, he co-founded a school for children. He subsequently gained a place to study medicine in Scotland, completing his pre-clinical course at St Andrews University and then clinical years at Glasgow University, from where he graduated 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 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. The previous month he witnessed the effects of the 1980 Nairobi hotel bombing. It prompted him to re-apply to medical schools and was accepted for a pre-clinical course at St Andrews University in Scotland, from where he moved to from Gravesend. While studying at St Andrew's he continued to raise funds for his Kenyan school and individual sponserships for its children. He gained a bachelor's degree in 1984. Mamode subsequently completed his clinical years at Glasgow University and graduated MB ChB in 1987.

Early career
In 1994 Mamode worked as a surgeon in Rwanda. 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 deputy chairman of the BMA's committee for newly qualified doctors, whilst working as a specialist registrar in vascular surgery at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary. In 2000 he was chairman of its negotiating committee and the doctors' chief negotiator for a new contract for recently qualified physicians. In the same year 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, and later that year was elected deputy chairman of the BMA's Central Consultants and Specialists Committee. 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). The following year he led the surgical team that used the world's first integration of 3D printing of an adult-sized, living-donor kidney from a father to plan a kidney transplant into his two year old daughter. 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 Trusts Evelina Children’s Hospital (ECH). His research throughout his career in transplantion surgery has included blood group incompatible transplantation, laparoscopic retrieval of kidneys and long-term graft survival. Later, Judge Murdin would describe him as having "an international reputation for paediatric transplantation" who "received referrals from across the UK and beyond".

In May 2020 Mamode's honorary post at GOSH ended, and later that year he stepped down from his clinical lead role at GSTT. His job there ended in March 2022. Following a tribunal, a judgement in 2024 concluded that his "complaint of constructive unfair dismissal is well-founded and succeeds". From October 2022 to May 2023, Mamode worked on establishing a transplant programme in Mauritius.

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, in which he and his team showed how King George VI's cancerous lung was removed at Buckingham Palace in 1951.