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Marcus Wootton is a globally experienced nurse, educator, researcher, and global nursing leader with more than 20 yearsтАЩ experience working across health systems, humanitarian response, and professional education in low- resource and conflict-affected settings.
His work focuses on strengthening nursing and paediatric care, supporting health workers in crises, and translating evidence into practical, scalable improvement.
Marcus Wootton began his career in Vietnam, working with homeless, disabled, and abandoned children and infants in Ho Chi Minh City, before returning to the UK to train as an adult and childrenтАЩs nurse.
Marcus Wootton worked for several years in emergency care in London, alongside completing specialist training in childrenтАЩs nursing and tropical nursing, and later an MSc in Public Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
These experiences shaped his long-standing interest in equity, access, and the role of frontline health workers in fragile systems. His early international humanitarian work included deployments with M├йdecins Sans Fronti├иres in South Sudan, where he treated victims of conflict, supported large-scale vaccination campaigns across the Eastern Upper Nile, and contributed to the response to a major cholera outbreak.
Alongside this, he undertook teaching and consultancy roles in Kenya, Zambia, and Uganda, and worked with the charity Medical Justice supporting survivors of torture detained in UK immigration removal centres. This work contributed evidence to the Brook
House Inquiry, which highlighted systemic failures in detention healthcare. Since 2016, MarcusтАЩs work has been primarily focused on global child health and health systems strengthening through his role at the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. He played a central role in the CollegeтАЩs Myanmar Programme, supported by UNICEF and implemented across four regions.
Between 2016 and 2021, programme-supported hospitals achieved substantial improvements in quality of care, with reductions in paediatric mortality of 44% and neonatal mortality of 35%. The programme was recognised with the British Medical Journal South Asia Excellence in Medical Education Award. During this period, Marcus also led major global health programmes in Nepal, managing a significant UNICEF- funded initiative to strengthen hospital-based care for newborns and children.
This work supported the development of NepalтАЩs first national standards for hospital paediatric and newborn care, authored by Nepali paediatricians.
It contributed to a tripling of the number of hospital units able to care for sick newborns in the countryтАЩs most populous province, Madesh Pradesh.
Marcus Wootton also supported the development of digital clinical guidance tools to improve access to evidence-based care. Since the COVID-19 pandemic and the military coup in Myanmar in 2021, MarcusтАЩs work has increasingly focused on supporting health workers operating in crisis and conflict.
He has led the rapid adaptation of clinical education and support models, delivering supplies, mobile connectivity and online clinical resources via platforms such as websites and YouTube. Supported by UNICEF, FCDO/THET, and the Burdett Trust, this work has reached thousands of health workers, with clinical resources accessed more than 80,000 times.
Alongside this, Marcus Wootton has led the development of an innovative hybrid undergraduate nursing degree with nursing organisations in Myanmar, convening more than 50 international nurses and doctors to develop curriculum content and support delivery under highly constrained conditions. More than 120 student nurses are currently enrolled in this programme.
Marcus Wootton is currently Associate Director of the International Academy at the Royal College of Nursing, where he leads international nursing initiatives, global partnerships, and work on leadership, education, policy and humanitarian response.
He lectures internationally, holds honorary academic positions, and has published widely on global health, nursing, emergency care, and health systems in fragile and conflict-affected contexts.
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