Dr Askar Kukkady

Askar is a consultant Paediatric Surgeon and Urologist with expertise in surgery on newborns, infants, children and adolescents. He deals with a wide range of paediatric surgical conditions including Abdominal, Thoracic, Head and Neck, and Urological.

He has extensive experience in Paediatric Urology, treating developmental and acquired Urogenital conditions. These include hernias, hydrocoeles, undescended testes, circumcision, hypospadias, hydronephrosis and vesico-ureteric reflux.

Upper GI endoscopy is one of the most common procedures Askar carries out in diagnosing conditions such as coeliac disease. He uses minimally invasive surgical techniques such as Laparoscopy for gastrointestinal disease, gall bladder disease, undescended testes and varicocoele, along with Thoracoscopy for conditions such as empyema, lung lesions and oesopghageal lesions.

He also has a special interest in the reconstruction of the chest wall to correct conditions such as Pectus Excavatum.

After studying for his Master of Surgery (General) in India, Askar went on to postdoctoral training in paediatric surgery (M.Ch.), also in India. He then took up an Overseas Fellowship in paediatric surgery in Oxford (UK), leading to his becoming a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, Edinburgh. He was subsequently appointed as an International Fellow in Paediatric Surgery at the Children’s Hospital, Los Angeles, USA, where he worked for two years before migrating to New Zealand in 1997. After further training in New Zealand and Australia he became a Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons in Paediatric Surgery.

Askar is currently the Clinical Director of Paediatric Surgery and Paediatric Urology at Waikato Public Hospital, and is visiting paediatric surgeon at Tauranga Hospital. He has a private practice in Hamilton and Tauranga and operates in all the private hospitals in Hamilton and at Grace Hospital, Tauranga.

He is the supervisor for paediatric surgical training at Waikato Hospital, and enjoys teaching undergraduate medical students in his role as Honorary Senior Clinical Lecturer for the University of Auckland.

For Askar, every child is special, and his primary concern is to restore his young patients to good health. Leading the medical team of 40 that successfully separated the Pygopagus conjoined twins at Waikato Hospital during a 22-hour operation in 2004 has remained the highlight of his surgical career.