Combat Casualties: What Should We Do When the Fighting is Over?

Surgeon, professor and soldier Shehan Hettiaratchy examines how society can support those affected by war.

An inevitable consequence of war is the creation of veterans who have been wounded and face a life living with the physical and mental consequences of their time in uniform. How best to meet that challenge to ensure that they can live their best lives is something society must step up to deliver.

In this talk, Shehan Hettiaratchy will explore the human cost of war and how we can mitigate the long-term consequences by looking at what the UK has developed and the challenges that other war-affected regions such as Ukraine and Gaza now face.

About the speaker

Shehan Hettiaratchy is a consultant plastic and reconstructive surgeon focusing on hand and complex extremity reconstruction at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, London. He is NHS England's National Clinical Director for Armed Forces and established Op Restore, NHS England's physical health and wellbeing service for military veterans, which he continues to lead.

He is a professor of practice in plastic and reconstructive surgery at Imperial College London, where his research focuses on trauma-related care. Throughout his career, he has delivered humanitarian surgical care, most recently on missions to Ukraine and Gaza with UK-Med.

Commissioned into The Parachute Regiment before starting university, he has spent more than 20 years as a reservist in the British Army, mainly serving with airborne forces. He was deployed to Afghanistan twice and spent four years as a senior lecturer in the Academic Department of Military Surgery and Trauma at the Royal Centre for Defence Medicine.

He was appointed an OBE in the 2025 New Year's Honours. His first book, 'The Careful Surgeon', was published in 2026.