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This is where we share what's changing as a result of the work we do alongside our partners and what your support helps make possible.
We work in long-term partnerships, so impact builds slowly. A lot of it shows up as health workers making clearer decisions for patients, training programmes growing stronger over time, and local teams taking on more leadership of the work. We've tried to capture both the numbers and the more qualitative shifts on this page.
20,000
patients with access to high-quality imaging through our programmes in 2025
106+
domain specialist volunteers contributing across education, clinical support and research
44
doctors certified in POCUS in Ghana in Phase 1 (2021–2025), with 7 trainers trained
6
Malawian MMed radiology trainees supported through subspecialty teaching and mentoring in 2025
852
patients in The Gambia supported through expert remote second opinions since 2021
Education and training
Our Point of Care Ultrasound (POCUS) training partnership in Ghana continued to grow. A key shift was that Ghanaian trainers now deliver the majority of teaching and are designing the next phase with us (2027–2030). They are also teaching at their own hospitals - an important "multiplier effect" of the programme. It shows how investing in trainers today improves patient access to POCUS for years to come.
Two trainers piloted our first POCUS module for specialists in Nephrology at Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital in Accra; a perfect example of this multiplier effect.
In Malawi, our network of volunteer teachers working with the Radiology training programme continued to grow. After consistently delivering online lectures, case reviews, journal clubs and a range of specialist in-country visits over the years, the three senior trainees have now started to teach their younger peers themselves and continue to expand access to radiology services for their patients.
"As a result of this initiative, other subspecialties in the internal medicine faculty have expressed strong interest in expanding the module training for their respective disciplines. We are optimistic that this cohort of participants will become future leaders in nephrology POCUS upon their successful completion."
Dr Martha Tufuor-Kokor, WWR POCUS trainer and lead of the Nephrology POCUS pilot, Ghana
Clinical service support
Clinical support is where volunteers contribute to individual patient care.
At Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital in Malawi, our volunteer teleradiologists provided CT scan reports for 195 patients who needed an expert opinion in 2025. We continued our input into the gynaecological cancer MDT meetings, in collaboration with the British Society of Urogynecological Radiology. Such targeted support for selected patients with complex problems, has a direct impact on planning their treatment and outcome. An expert eye can make all the difference and also helps ensure that costly and scarce tests such as CT and MRI are used effectively.
In The Gambia, clinicians at the MRC clinic treated 231 patients with complicated X-rays or CT scans, with the help of our volunteers. Through discussing cases at monthly online X-ray meetings all staff have the opportunity to learn from these cases, improving their skills and confidence for the future.
We also started a collaboration in The Gambia, to support the new Radiology training programme at Edward Francis Smalls Teaching Hospital with clinical expertise and teaching. This collaboration is led by Dr Kwasi Twum, Senior Radiologist in Ghana, on behalf of Worldwide Radiology; drawing on his expertise in West African Radiology training.
As these new trainees complete their course, access to expert medical imaging in The Gambia will start to grow in the next 5 years.
"Radiologists and Oncologists are very few in LMIC clinical settings and so access to a second opinion or MDT makes decision making in complex cases reassuring as it draws on experiences of multiple remote specialists and is evidence based. This protects both patients and practitioners, improves clinical outcomes and reduces errors."
Professor Tinu Agunloye, Chair of the Faculty of Radiology of the West African College of Surgeons and WWR project partner
Research
Research is how we help build the evidence for good quality imaging.
In 2025, we completed our contribution to the Start4All research programme, a UNITAID-funded global TB initiative led by the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and the Stop TB Partnership. We completed annotation of a library of 880 chest X-rays from children in Cameroon and Vietnam with suspected TB, ready for use to test AI-software solutions. This work will contribute to better quality AI tools, giving more children access to TB diagnosis.
We published the evaluation of Phase 1 of our Ghana POCUS programme, documenting impact and learning about challenges and solutions.
A unique study on the use of ultrasound in plague research, performed by our team in collaboration with a research group at Oxford University, was accepted for publication in a scientific journal, and one of our POCUS trainers in Ghana was awarded a research seed grant by the European Society of Radiology to evaluate POCUS as an alternative to CT in suspected pulmonary embolism - an important question to answer for patients where CT often is not an option or affordable.
Some of our work isn't easy to measure, but valuable for the development of imaging services as a whole.
In Malawi, we co-facilitated the country's first national workshop on digital solutions and AI in radiology, hosted with the Malawi Liverpool Wellcome Research Programme, the Ministry of Health, and Kamuzu University of Health Sciences. Fifty participants - from policymakers and regulators to senior hospital staff - discussed teleradiology, AI tools for TB chest X-ray, patient safety and regulation. Many valued the opportunity to come together as the wider imaging community and suggested it should become an annual event.
In Ghana, our partners continue to work to embed POCUS training into national curricula and contribute to policy development, such as best practice guidelines.
Presentations at the "Radiology Interest Group Africa (RIGAf)" conference in 2025, delivered online, and at the "European Congress of Radiology" in Vienna highlighted our partnership-based approach, as Dr Liz Joekes and Professor Atinuke Agunloye from the West African College of Physicians and Surgeons jointly presented on the needs, examples and challenges of radiology in Africa. They also advocated for their shared vision that imaging professionals can collaborate effectively across borders to improve radiology. Reflecting on the RIGAf address, the conference organising committee noted that it "beautifully highlighted how excellence in radiology can be both globally informed and locally impactful."
Our 2025 impact
Medical imaging saves lives, but access to it is still deeply unequal. Our 2025 Impact Report shows how we are working with partners to improve access to practical imaging education, clinical support and research in settings where it is hardest to access.
Inside, you can read about progress in Ghana, Malawi and The Gambia, and see how volunteer expertise, strong partnerships and donor support helped health workers make clearer decisions for their patients.
It also shares the bigger picture of what changed in 2025 and where this work is heading next. Read the report to see the difference your support makes.
What we're learning
We aim to be honest about what is hard and not just share what is working. A few things we are thinking about at the moment:
Measuring long-term outcomes is difficult
It's easy to count how many clinicians we've trained. It's much harder to track how the teaching impacts on individual patient outcomes. The POCUS programme evaluation flagged this as a challenge, so we are prioritising how to improve tracking patient impact.
Sustainable programmes cannot fully rely on volunteers
Our programmes depend heavily on passionate imaging professionals giving time alongside busy jobs and other commitments. They bring invaluable expertise, which is hugely important to be able to deliver. However, we have to stay mindful not to overly rely on volunteers. Sustainable programmes need support from a core staff team, managing volunteers and their activities for best impact for all.
Context matters and projects need a “home”
From our evaluations we learned that we need to start new programmes with even better and more in-depth needs assessments, identifying local leadership and an “institutional home” for a project more clearly from the outset. As we've done with Dr Kwasi Twum's recent work, developing our new collaboration in The Gambia.
This shift to locally led programming is a journey for both partners
Moving from a UK-led approach to genuinely locally owned work takes time, trust, and honest conversations about what partners actually want from the relationship. Which is why we’ve been taking a more intentional approach to participatory engagement (including from a programme monitoring and evaluation perspective) to develop capacity for shifting leadership together with our partners. Our expert assessment of power relations in the Ghana POCUS partnership, for example, highlighted a partner preference for WWR continuing to help hold partners accountable and ensuring teaching quality in the next programme phase, rather than WWR handing over fully at this time.