Bringing Christians together from around the world to train and disciple African surgeons in Africa.

PAACS, The Pan African Academy for Christian Surgeons, is operational in training programs in general surgery and presently active in Gabon, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Niger, Egypt, Tanzania,  Kenya (2) and Malawi utilizing ten different hospitals. 

There are more than 80 surgeons in the 5 year training program at this moment – committed to their work, committed to Christ, committed to spread the News about life in Christ now and eternally. It has subsequently graduated 31 general surgeons and completed training of 5 pediatric surgeons.  All graduates (100%) are serving in low-resource areas or are seeking additional training. 

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“Changing the spiritual and physical health of a continent”  

The vision of PAACS is to train surgeons living the gospel and ministering to the sick. PAACS exists to train and disciple African surgeons to glorify God and to provide excellent, compassionate care to those most in need.The goal is to train and disciple 100 African surgeons by 2020 by 'Bringing Christians together from around the world to train and disciple African surgeons in Africa.'; an unbelievable privilege to work with these excellent surgeons committed to the best quality service possible to patients and to the training of Christian surgeons in Africa in collaboration with Lomal Linda University, Southern California, USA.

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The need for surgeons in Africa

The World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines for developing countries specifies there needs to be 1 surgeon per 20,000 people.

The current status:

• In the US there is 1 surgeon for every 2,272 people;
• In Ethiopia there is 1 surgeon for every 1.6 million people;
• In West-Africa that's 1 per 1.75 million people.

As you can see the need for surgeons in Africa is very big!

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I have been visiting the approved training hospitals in Cameroon, Malawi and Ethiopia since 2008 with the aim to teach general plastic and reconstructive surgical  principles to general surgeons in training who would not have the luxury of other surgical specialty services available in the areas they would serve once qualified and would need the basic knowledge to handle more complicated situations they might face when on their own.

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