​What is your mission to Nigeria?

The West African College of Surgeons is the most important, most powerful college in our sub region because it began its activities more than 50 years ago. It's exactly 54 years old. So it's the oldest professional association in the West Africa, based in Nigeria. And this college has up till date, more than 50 members. The country members are from West Africa, the country of ECOWAS. So you have Francophone inside. You have Anglophone. So it's a very important and international college. Since I took over the presidency of the college, last March in Togo, I have the honour and also the opportunity to come and pay a courtesy visit to all the authorities in the country which belong to the college. That's why I am in Nigeria.

The purpose of my mission here is to present to the authority in the health system, the government of Nigeria, the new development now of the West African College of Surgeons because we have to achieve some important challenges about human resources, about training programmes around the West African sub-region and also in Nigeria.

Can you tell us some of the challenges the college has faced in recent times?

The college has done a lot, especially on the training and in training programme. You see the objective of the main topic or the main target of the college is the promotion, organization and the conduct of post graduates in medical education. This also includes their training and research. So we have trained since we began our training programme, more than 7,000 to 10,000 spe...ts. This is a great landmark the college has achieved. We have also achieved some training development programme from workshops and courses. So these are the main component of the college- training programmes, workshop, courses, examiners, trainers, the professors, the teachers in surgery and related discipline in the sub region.

In terms of comparism, how would you rate doctors that were produced then and the ones produced now by the college?

Our standard is a high level one. There is no difference in our standard between the training in our college and the ones in Europe, United States etc. We have a high expertise to give to the trainees and the candidates for our fellowship because we award fellowship to all the people who come to train at the college. We also award diploma for the training.

One of the main reasons why medical tourism continues to flourish in Nigeria and other African countries is that people who can afford it travel abroad for specialized surgeries because our surgeons are inefficient. How can the college tackle this?

We are struggling to take care of this. I've told you that we are doing our best to produce more human resources of high standard level for West Africa in surgery and all the high specialty surgery you can think of, including ophthalmology, dental surgery, stomachtology, anesthesia, radiology, etc. All these we are doing and we think that these are the targets and also the challenges to make sure that the people are well-trained in the sub region so that our medical personnel do not need to travel outside the sub region to undergo training programme. I want to emphasize that all the training programmes are being done and carried out by the college.

How would you assess Nigerian doctors who have passed through that college?

Are you talking about post graduate medical students because we don't handle undergraduates? Yes, a lot of Nigerians come to the college for fellowship and diploma training. We have done a lot but it's not enough. We have to improve the number of spe...ts in Nigeria coming to the college for training. Yes, I agree the ones who come do well. They are in high positions now in Nigeria's health care system. Nigeria's Minister of Health, Prof Onyebuchi Chukwu is a fellow of West African College of Surgeons. Many of your chief medical directors are coming and are fellows of the college. The consultants in your teaching hospitals are fellows of the college. So the college has done and has given a lot of expertise and high standard professional teachings to the system. So it's not only in Nigeria but elsewhere in the sub region. We have also done a lot for others, for example, Ghana.

What is the standard for admission?

We have standards criteria that the candidate has to meet before being admitted into the system and into the programme of the college. You have to be a medical doctor first and foremost. And you have to have some criteria too. When you come into the college, you go through primary part one, part two exams before you can become a fellow of the college. There is another way the college awards another certification like the diploma. But they are not consultants. They cannot perform in the teaching hospital but for the major manpower development, it is very good. We have focused our efforts on this major manpower development. That is a new development of the college.

What is the greatest health challenge in West Africa?

We have challenge of infrastructure. We have to make progress in our infrastructure. We have to face too the challenge of Africa re-integration. We have to remind ourselves too that we work together among all the spe...ts of the doctors in the West Africa so West African integration via the college from human resources in health care system is one big challenge that we have to face. We have started but we have to emphasise that point.

How would you assess your visit to Nigeria?

All well and good. I visited the National Hospital which is headed by a fellow of the college. What I saw is impressive. I inspected the Trauma centre which will take care of all the specialties in surgery. The centre has high technology for diagnosis, training and treatment of all kinds of patients. The West African College of Surgeons is going to be closely linked with the hospital. The Trauma centre will be a centre of excellence.

I also visited the University of Abuja Teaching Hospital. It has a good platform in terms of human resources and infrastructure and in terms of experience.
I am happy that I have been in contact with everyone here and as a training centre, it's a centre of excellence and in terms of patronage. Its among the best centre accredited by the college.

Garki Hospital too has a good concept which should be duplicated in the West African region.

What does the college plan to do in terms of innovation?

We are going to implement the membership programme. When we talk about membership, we are talking about doctors. We need manpower to be able to take care of the diseases in Nigeria and the sub region. If we achieve that goal, we'll be able to achieve attain a quality health care. That means surgery will be available and affordable in the creeks, in the rural areas, sub urban and urban areas.


I am happy that in Nigeria, we have these three hospitals to train our doctors for this membership.