World J Surg (2023) 47:833–834
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00268-023-06929-2
EDITORIAL PERSPECTIVE
Inspirational Women in Surgery: Prof. Afua A.J. Hesse,
Paediatric Surgeon, Ghana
Florence Dedey1 2• Adam Gyedu
Accepted: 15 January 2023 / Published online: 2 February 2023
 The Author(s) under exclusive licence to Société Internationale de Chirurgie 2023
going to be a Paediatric Surgeon and never wavered from
that intent. She is a practical person and likes to see instant
results, and a surgical career satisfied that need.
She trained at the University of Ghana Medical School
(UGMS) from 1971 to 1976 for her MBChB and started her
surgery residency in 1980. She subsequently completed
surgery training in the UK and became a Fellow of the
Royal College of Edinburgh in 1983. She is also a Fellow
of the West African College of Surgeons (WACS) and a
foundation Fellow of the Ghana College of Physicians and
Surgeons (GCPS).
She worked as a Clinical Fellow at the Royal Hospital
for Sick Children in Bristol from 1983 to 1988, when she
returned to Ghana to lecture in UGMS, her alma mater. She
had great mentors, including the late Prof. E. A Badoe who
arranged for her posting in the UK. There were not many
female role models in the field at the time, especially in
Ghana. She was the only Paediatric Surgeon for the entire
Prof. Afua Hesse is the first female Paediatric Surgeon in Southern Ghana for over 5 years in the early 1990s and
Ghana who has achieved many ‘firsts’ in her lifetime, impacted the lives of many children who needed surgery.
providing inspiration in her country [1]. Prof. Hesse was She trained many generations of subsequent Paediatric
born to parents who were both educators. Her father treated Surgeons in Ghana and contributed significantly to the
his male and female children equally, and so she says ‘‘I training of surgeons in Nigeria through the WACS. She is
felt empowered right from when I was little to do anything well-published and has contributed chapters to many Pae-
I wanted’’. At the age of 4 years, she declared that she was diatric Surgery textbooks relating to Africa in particular.
Aside her impact as an educator, she has also led
& numerous innovations to improve the quality of surgicalFlorence Dedey
flodedey@yahoo.com service provision. These include establishing the first Well-
Woman’s clinic in Ghana, staffed by female doctors. This
Adam Gyedu
drgyedu@gmail.com clinic aims to give more women the confidence in seeking
help for their reproductive health. She helped establish the
1 Department of Surgery, University of Ghana Medical School, Hospitality section in the Department of Surgery, which
Accra, Ghana
has improved the patient experience in the hospital. As the
2 Department of Surgery, Kwame Nkrumah University of first female Director of Medical Affairs at Korle Bu
Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana
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834 World J Surg (2023) 47:833–834
Teaching Hospital, she led improvements in the quality of discipline can enable anyone to achieve even more than
care and safety provided by the hospital by introducing the they could imagine. One yet unsolved problem that Prof.
modified WHO Patient Safety Checklist, and initiated the Hesse identifies is the high burden of unmet needs for
refurbishment and technological update of the operating neonatal surgical care that has resulted in long surgery
theatres dedicated solely to Paediatric Surgery. waiting times. She believes more paediatric surgeons, and
She built international collaborations to improve the paediatric anaesthesiologists need to be trained to enable
management of anorectal malformations of children, and as safer outcomes for neonates, in particular.
CEO of the largest referral centre in the country, she
championed the building of a renal centre.
She has served as External Examiner for several medical
schools in Ghana over the years and is an Examiner for the Reference
WACS and GCPS. She is currently President of the Accra
1. Wireko V (2010) A model of excellence: Prof. Afua Hesse’s
College of Medicine, a private medical school co-founded
example. Daily Graphic Newspaper, Accra, Modern Ghana.
by her family in 2015, which has graduated 3 classes of https://www.modernghana.com/news/293214/a-model-of-excel
doctors so far to augment the needs of the country. lence-prof-afua-hesse039s-example.html
According to Prof. Hesse, ‘‘Being the only female for
many years in the field of surgery in Ghana did have Publisher’s Note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to
challenges and was certainly very lonely’’ but her faith has jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
been her bulwark and she believes that determination and
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