Congratulations to Sas Banerjee, Consultant General, Laparoscopic and Colorectal Surgeon and Endoscopy and Joint Gastroenterology Lead at our Trust, who has been appointed as Endoscopy Clinical Director for NHS London.

Sas will be providing clinical leadership to endoscopy services in London, including chairing the London Endoscopy Clinical Leadership Group which sits alongside five integrated care systems for endoscopy services in the capital.

He will also provide expert advice on endoscopy issues to the Regional Medical Director and will be leading on improvement projects.

During a Trust-wide staff briefing, our Chief Executive, Tony Chambers, said: “Sas will help shape what the endoscopy world will look like in a post-Covid world."

Reflecting on his priorities for the role, Sas said: “During the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, we launched an endoscopy recovery programme with NHS London which was successful. This culminated in our ‘Gut Feeling Week’ – a week where we pulled together all the resources we could to safely care for as many patients as possible to reduce waiting times.

“Learning from this fantastic week has been shared with other Endoscopy teams and networks. Unfortunately, our efforts have been dampened by the second wave and so we’ll need to do the hard work all over again – although this time with very exhausted staff.

“Workforce is a challenge. England is set to reduce the age of bowel cancer screening by April 2021. To make sure we are prepared for this change, we need to train more staff in endoscopy as well as retain all the staff we already have.

“More broadly, my role will also focus on health inequalities in cancer. When you look at one year and five year survival rates for patients, outcomes vary depending on geographical areas. I will work with the five integrated care systems to agree the best ways of working, so we can help reduce these health inequalities.”