About establishing Reconstructive Surgery services in West Africa
Reconstructive surgery has an immense role to play in Africa to help alleviate a large number of devastating conditions that produce deformity and disability.
No reconstructive surgery services were available in Ghana until this Scottish charity commenced its efforts in 1993 to establish such a specialty.
In partnership with the Ghana Ministry of Health, ReSurge Africa has created West Africa’s first reconstructive plastic surgery service in Ghana. A 73 bed unit with 2 operating theatres was built and equipped in Ghana’s largest teaching hospital, where Ghanaian doctors, anaesthetists, nurses and physiotherapists are trained in reconstructive techniques and rehabilitation. This Unit is now managed entirely by the Ghanaian Ministry of Health.
What makes this charity different?
We don't provide temporary services from visiting surgeons that make a short-term difference. ReSurge Africa has the long term aim of training and empowering local medical staff. These Surgeons, Anaesthetists, Nurses and Therapists have attained levels of skill that have lead to the creation of a permanent and self sustaining reconstructive surgery service in Ghana.
Happily this vision is nearing fruition and following overseas training of some further medical personnel and the provision of some additional sophisticated equipment, surgery of all degrees of complexity can be successfully undertaken and all future training will be African to African.
New directions
The successful Reconstructive Surgery unit in Accra is increasingly becoming the hub for dissemination of reconstructive surgery elsewhere in the sub-continent. Resurge Africa will support the Accra Unit to establish other self-sustaining reconstructive surgery units in West Africa. Training courses and symposiums are arranged regularly in Accra and in Sierra Leone training and operational missions by UK medical personnel and Ghanaian surgeons and nurses have commenced.
ReSurge Africa requires funds to extend this essential service. You can help the project through donations of cash, equipment, or by volunteering your time
