GEORGES AZZIE

About Dr. Georges Azzie

Dr. Georges Azzie is a pediatric surgeon at the Hospital for Sick Children. His long-standing interests in sustainable surgical education and health care in developing nations have merged and led him on extensive missions around the world.

Efforts Abroad

Dr. Georges Azzie’s long-standing interests in international health stem from years spent working in Africa, the Middle East, Australasia and the United States. His commitment to sustainable surgical education and health care in developing nations have merged and led him to collaborate mainly with colleagues in Africa. As an effective surgical educator, Dr. Azzie is keen on developing international academic curriculums that are both relevant and respectful to a country’s resources and culture.

With a reputation as an enthusiastic teacher at the University of Toronto, he has brought his talents overseas and facilitated the surgical training of residents in low-resource settings. Dr. Azzie has developed several training programs, and consistently acknowledges the role of country-specific context, resources, ethics, and culture – as well as the role that developing relationships with the locals and key players within country infrastructure will play in gaining sustainable support. Most notably, he has been able to bring his expertise in laparoscopic simulation to Botswana to create a location-specific curriculum for training the local specialists.

His current focus is on upskilling of colleagues in low- middle- income countries, and helping establish contextualized training programs. He is working with medical students from many African countries in an effort to establish a society for student surgical interest groups that will take on a global leadership role.