Surgeon Noonan is a registered charity (RCN: 20025571) run voluntarily by 4th year medical students from University College Cork, Ireland. Each year, our goal is to raise over €150,000, which goes directly towards underfunded rural hospitals in Sub-Saharan Africa. 

Each Summer, over 45 students travel to hospitals in Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Ghana, and Zambia, bringing with them much-needed medical supplies and financial aid. These students complete an elective placement with the UCC School of Medicine. Students cover all travel expenses themselves; ensuring that 100% of funds raised go towards our beneficiary hospitals. We have a strong accountability policy, which involves monitoring what our beneficiary hospitals intend to spend the donated funds on, as well as stringent follow-up processes on where this capital is invested. Every year, we also try to collect medical supplies to distribute to the hospitals we visit. 

These hospitals are desperately lacking in basic analgesics, antibiotics, vitamins, sterile medical equipment etc. We extend our immense gratitude to those involved in healthcare in the Munster region who rally around yearly and donate as much as possible. The finance which we provide to these hospitals, not only serves as maintenance funding but also subsidises larger capital projects. Examples of such developments undertaken with the aid of the Surgeon Noonan Society include the building of new wards, a surgical unit, and the introduction of an HIV Outreach Clinic.

For those who participate, it is an invaluable experience and has been an extremely rewarding aspect of the university for UCC medical students for the past 40 years.

Each new academic year, we invite any new medical and non-medical students who may wish to contribute to the society to get involved in any way they can. We look forward to upholding and developing upon the strong traditions, values, and successes of the charity, which have been in place since 1978.