Surgeons undertake course in plastic surgery

Accra, March 13, GNA - A one-week Pan African course on burns and plastic surgery for 80 surgeons opened in Accra on Monday to offer participants the opportunity to improve their knowledge of the specialised area.

The course is being organised by the International Reconstructive Plastic Surgery (Ghana) Project, in conjunction with the University of Ghana Medical school, the Ministry of Health and the Aesthetic Surgery Society.

Participants are from Ghana, Nigeria, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Libya. Also in attendance are 20 health workers from all over the world. The Minister of Communications, Mr John Mahama will on Tuesday perform the official opening.

Mr Martyn Webster, a consultant plastic surgeon from Scotland, who spoke on behalf of the organisers told the GNA in an interview that the course is aimed at training surgeons on how to treat burns, body deformities, accident victims, among other deformities.

The course would also afford participants the techniques of handling both issues on surgical and patients suffering from surgical problems. Topics to be discussed include pathophysiology of burns, treatment of longstanding contractures, vaginal reconstruction, breast reconstruction, cancer of the head and neck.

Ghana's Burns and Reconstructive Surgery project was established in 1992 and commissioned in 1997 as a result of a visit by Professor Jack Mustarde, a retired Scottish plastic Surgeon, to Ghana to undertake a series of operations locally.