Soundeffects news | A/Prof Suresh de Silva

A/Prof Suresh de Silva

Co-founder and Chairperson of Radiology Across Borders

Associate Professor Suresh de Silva is a radiologist and fellow of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Radiologists with subspecialty interests in oncological, urogenital, gastrointestinal radiology and body and pelvic MRI. He has an associate professor appointment at UNSW and is committed to clinical and radiological research having completed in 2016 a postgraduate degree in clinical trials research at the University of Sydney. He has published in peer-reviewed journals in urological/oncological work and has a special interest in radiological and clinical trial research. He is on the review board for several local and international journals and the RCC subcommittee for the peak research group ANZUP. Suresh is passionate about philanthropy having founded and presently chairing Radiology Across Borders (RAB). He strongly believes that good education and infrastructure should be made available to all and is committed to seeing this vision come to fruition. The ASA is a proud major partner of RAB, and we are delighted to have A/Prof de Silva as our opening plenary speaker at this year’s conference. We sat down with Suresh to find out how he started RAB, how sonographers support RAB’s mission and some of the key takeaways from his opening plenary speech.

How did the idea for Radiology Across Borders come about, and how did you go about setting it up?

I guess the idea is something that took many years. So, when I finished medical school in the 1990s I was as an intern and then resident.

At the back of my mind at that stage was how can I give back? I have always thought about how can I give back to emerging nations or developing nations through my profession, but you don’t really take it seriously until you become a specialist because you’ve got to get the runs on the board, get your specialisation, etc.

But I have always wanted to do that, and I have always thought to myself that everyone else does too. But I have subsequently realised that that was not the case.

I was born in Sri Lanka and lived in England before I came to Australia and so I have got to see the two sides of the world in terms of those who have and those who haven’t. I think that was partly because we used to go back to Sri Lanka a lot and that probably inspired me to do something like this. But I’ve also got to say that the desire to do this really came from my parents.

I think I’ve got to thank my parents because we were never a well-off family, and they did it tough, but I think that is what inspired me to do something to help others.

So those are probably the two reasons: experiencing first-hand the disparity and then when you finish your medical degree, there’s a certain part of you that says you’ve got to give back. So, I think a combination of both those things was how it came about.

At the start of 2010, I approached Don Swinburne who was then the CEO of the College of Radiologists and I got some contacts. I got a contact in Fiji and a contact in the Solomon Islands, and then set it up from there with an inaugural site visit to Fiji in 2010. So, it came through collaboration with the college or rather Don Swinburne and then from there it took off when I brought other people on board, and we had Siemens come on as a major partner in 2016.

So, it has been a gradual process, and it took about five years until we started to achieve recognition.

Do you think that’s something that you could have done straight out of medical school, or do you think that anyone with a great idea can bring about change if they’ve got the drive?

If we take the first part concerning specifically radiology, the answer is no. I don’t think I could have done it when I left medical school. I definitely couldn’t have done it in the nineties, because a lot of what we do now is connectivity through online teaching, and that didn’t exist then.

And, secondly, because I didn’t have any radiological experience, you have to get that before you can venture into the area. So the answer is no. I couldn’t have done it in the 1990s.

If I was a consultant, yes, very much so, but not coming straight out of med school. Having said that, we do have quite a few junior doctors who are part of what we do, but they need support. In terms of an idea, can I say that I think any idea can be made successful, philanthropy or corporate if you have the following three things:

One – You’ve got to have a good idea and something that’s very different. You can’t be reinventing the wheel.

Two – I think you have to work hard at it. It’s not enough to have a good idea. You’ve got to put the effort in to make it successful.

Three – You’ve got to bring people along with you. And the way I think you bring people along with you is to show the value of it and you need to articulate it. If you don’t articulate it and tell them why it’s so important and make them believe in it, it doesn’t work. But if you have those three things you can make anything succeed.

How do you see the role of sonographers in supporting RAB’s mission and outreach projects?

Can I say that I think sonography and sonographers are becoming almost the most important part of what we do?Firstly, most of the emerging nations have two things. They have X-rays and they have sonography. Not all, but most countries now have CT, but maybe one CT for the whole country. If you go to the regional and the remote areas there, it’s an ultrasound machine or an X-ray machine.

So sonography is at the coalface as is imaging with X-ray. Secondly, it’s portable. Wherever we go, we can teach if we go into a remote community if we have an ultrasound machine. Siemens has just recently donated us an Accuson P 500 –the Siemens mobile machine, which is very kind of them. The beauty of sonography is that it’s so critical everywhere and secondly it’s portable.

And the other reason why sonography is becoming more and more significant for RAB is because we collaborate with ASA, because we’ve got the wealth of your resources combined with the wealth of our resources. And the combination is redefining education in emerging nations and sonography. Sonographers and ultrasound play an important role in our outreach programs. We recently formed the RAB Ultrasound Committee to reflect on the importance of sonography in what we do and its increasing role.

Can you share a specific experience or project that has had a profound impact on your career?

Probably two. One is to do with the actual charity. When I did the first visit to Fiji in 2010, I went with another radiologist and while we were there his daughter, who was only six weeks of age, got quite sick.

We took her to Suva Hospital. She ended up having a lumbar puncture and treatment. The management by the doctors there was really good, but the hospital had one functioning toilet and cockroaches everywhere, and it made us realise first-hand just how important this initiative was. Here we are [in Australia] complaining about excessive wait times in casualty, which in some circumstances can be difficult, but when you compare it to the resources they have in these emerging nations, we are very lucky. This cemented in my mind the importance of what we are doing and the importance of continuing to do this and bringing in as many resources as we can to make it more manageable for these developing nations or emerging nations. I didn’t think it would get to the stage where we are now. It will continue to grow. If we can bring in finance as well to help these countries, we’ll make a huge difference.

Secondly, the most significant experience in terms of my career, and this is going to sound very corny, was the birth of my first child. I have two children. The arrival of my first child shifted my perspective on a lot of things. I was trying to be a jack of all trades in radiology. I was doing both intervention and high-end intervention and diagnostics. And I cut back to just diagnostics and that enabled me to do a little bit more family wise and also enabled me to concentrate more on RAB. I think both of those were significant in terms of the influence on RAB in my career.

The theme of our conference this year is ‘Strength in Collaboration’. What does that phrase mean to you?

To me, strength in collaboration means individuals or organisations such as RAB and ASA coming together to work on a common goal or goals. Working together strengthens us so that we can leverage off each other. We might have weaknesses, but together we’re much more likely to achieve a common goal or goals.

And that comes through working together intellectually to respect and cooperate. So I think that’s what it means: working together to achieve a common goal.

As opening plenary speaker, what key takeaways or knowledge do you hope attendees will gain from your presentation?

That’s pretty easy. The first one is strength in collaboration. I plan to show images when I get around to talking about how ASA is collaborating with RAB to achieve what we do along with our other major partners Siemens, I-MED, Lumus Imaging and Sonic Healthcare Foundation, project partners and professional collaborations. I’ll be showing how we’re working together and how together we can achieve many goals.

But I do want to illustrate the needs that are out there. For example, in 2018 the World Bank estimated that 9 per cent of the population was living on less than $1.90 a day, which is extreme poverty, and how if people, when they can, can commit a small fraction of time or make a small financial donation can make a real difference in addressing this.

Hopefully, through RAB we’ll be able to show how clever technologies online can be utilised by people to make a small contribution to playing their part in changing the way emerging nations and other countries of need can benefit. So hopefully the combination of the strength in collaboration and the importance of philanthropy will be my two messages.