International Relations Committee

Click here to access the International Relations Committee area (must be logged in and a member of this committee).

International Relations Committee Chair

Gazi B. Zibari, MD, FACS, FICS, MD

The International Relations Committee will work to build and improve communications and societal relationships with HPB groups in other countries in the Americas, focusing specifically on the Western Hemisphere.

Gazi Zibari, MD - Chair

Cataldo Doria, MD, PhD - Co Chair

Daniel A. Anaya, MD

Prosanto Chaudhury, MD

Sander Scott Florman, MD, FACS

Nestor A. Gomez, MD, FACS, FACG

Dr. Andrew Gumbs, MD

Dr. Jeon Hoonbae, MD FACS

Antonio Nocchi Kalil, MD

Leonidas G. Koniaris, MD

Robert C. G. Martin, II, MD

Miguel-Angel Mercado, MD

Juan Pekolj, MD

Dr. Manuel Rodriguez-Davalos, MD

Juan R. Sanabria, MD, MSc, FRCSC, FACS

David Solis, MD

Jean-Nicolas Vauthey, MD, FACS  Ex Officio

International Relations News:

         AHPBA’s International Relations Committee, led by Chairman Gazi Zibari, M.D., aims to bring the expertise and resources of our members to heal sick people around the world. Many physicians travel with organizations such as Doctors Without Borders to war-stricken places, while others provide plastic surgery, eye surgery, and other treatment to poor people who need it, but lack access to this treatment. AHPBA aims to help those who need help for problems relating the liver gall bladder, and biliary tree. Dr. Zibari has taken several trips on his own to Kurdistan in Iraq to treat people there, but he and the IR Committee are working to get others involved.

         Dr. Andrew Gumbs had already gotten involved in hepatobiliary surgery overseas before he got involved with AHPBA. Dr. Gumbs, who joined the Summit Medical Group in Summit, NJ in January 2012, is the cofounder and Vice President of the Intercontinental Natural Orifice Endo-Laparoscopic Surgeons (iNOELS), which brings minimally invasive surgery to the developing world. The President of iNOELS is Elie Chouillard of the Centre Hospitalier Intercommunal in Poissy, France.

         “I had worked with Doctors Without Borders in a rape center in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, during the first democratic elections there in more than 40 years” Dr. Gumbs said. “I thought it was a bit rough dedicating five weeks in a war zone. I wanted to work with an organization for which we’d go for a week or two in peaceful areas. This may not be as as ‘sexy’ as working in a war zone, but there are many people in these areas who need our help. Even those who have health insurance can benefit. And Doctors Without Borders only does open-wound surgery. In the future, I want to do major liver resections and pancreatic resections, and, ultimately, do them minimally invasively. This is perfect for AHPBA members to do.”

         With iNOELS, he and his fellow members do open and minimally invasive surgeries. By going through natural orifices, including the umbilicus, Dr. Gumbs explained, the physicians can use smaller incisions than for open surgeries. This group completed its inaugural medical mission in Guayaquil, Ecuador at the Leon Bercerra Hospital and the Kennedy Clinic, with the coordination of Dr. Nestor Gomez, the Chairman of the South American Chapter of iNOELS. To perform this mission, iNOELS was able to obtain more then $60,000 in laparoscopic equipment. Karl Storz Endoscopy, Germany, and Covidien generously donated single port and laparoscopic devices.

Dr. Gumbs and his fellow, Dr. Gratia Tsai, were able to successfully perform a total of 15 surgeries from November 1-10, 2011, of which 12 were single-incision laparoscopic cholecystectomies. These are the first-single incision laparoscopic cases performed in Guayaquil, and the Hospital of Leon Bercerra is now proud to have the largest series of these new procedures in all of Ecuador. Prior to the iNoles mission, only one single port surgery had ever been performed in Ecuador.

“Leon Bercerra is a hospital for the poor, and up to 5% of the people in Ecuador with gallstones develop gallbladder cancer, and up to 10% develop it in Peru,” Dr. Gumbs said. “We wanted to use the most advanced technology, and to see if it was feasible to complete a mission like this. We learned that it is possible to do single-incision surgery in public hospitals in the developing world, but that we could only do fewer surgeries than we wanted due to the limitations of the single-incision technology we had.

“The patients were overjoyed to have this surgery,” he said. And the Ecuadorian surgeons are very interested in learning more about minimally invasive HPB surgery.”

In addition, Dr. Gumbs was invited by the Ecuadorian Chapter of the ACS, the Ecuadorian College of Surgeons and the Ecuadorian Chapter of the AHPBA to give six lectures during the mission. Both Dr. Gumbs and Dr. Tsai were made members of the Ecuadorian College of Surgeons, and Dr. Gumbs was inducted as a Correspondent Fellow of the Ecuadorian College of Surgeons. The Kennedy Clinic recognized their efforts to bring advanced minimally invasive HPB surgery to Ecuador by giving them an award in association with the program “Jornadas Médicas Solidarias.” The Hospital Leon Bercerra recognized their work by giving them the Benemérita Sociedad Protectura de la Infancia, y su Hospital de Ninos Leon Bercerra Award. The Mayor of the City of Guayaquil, the largest city in Ecuador with a population of 3.5 million, even made them Honorary Citizens. They were also interviewed on a 1-hour segment on RadioSucre, which is a National and International radio station, interviewed by the largest Ecuadorian Newspaper ElUniverso and several local TV stations.

The real star, however, was Dr. Nestor Gomez, Dr. Gumbs said. “Nestor Gomez was fantastic; he organized everything for us. He secured the patients, completed the paperwork, and did the pre-operative workups.“ The group plans to do another series of operations in San Pablo, on Ecuador’s Pacific coast, where they will operate in a convent that has an operating room donated by some American doctors.

“In the future, we want to bring surgeons to Africa, Central America, and Asia,” Dr. Gumbs said. “We are seeking donations from companies to buy minimally invasive equipment, and we are collecting unused equipment from hospitals and other physicians.“

Founding members of iNOELS : Ziad El Rassi, Andrew Gumbs and Elie Chouillard in St. George's Hospital in Beirut, Lebanon.	Tzu-jung Tsai, Andrew Gumbs and Stanley Jama performing single incision surgery in the Leon Bercerra Hospital, Guayaquil, Ecuador
Nestor Gomez, Chairman of the South American Chapter in his office in the Kennedy Clinic in Guayaquil, Ecuador.	The pediatric ward of the Hospital Leon Becerra.