Resurge Africa has helped to transform the face of reconstructive surgery in West Africa. With the support of people like you, we’ve been able to repair, rebuild and transform the lives of people frequently outcast by society through deformity and disability.
Since 1992, our work has touched the lives of tens of thousands of people in Ghana and has built a new hospital, equipped surgical theatres and provided the highly specialist training required for reconstructive and burns surgery. Ghana, which, until the formation of the charity had no reconstructive surgeons practicing within its borders, now boasts two fully-staffed units in Kumasi and Accra and over 15 trained reconstructive surgeons.
Following the establishment of the 75-bed reconstructive plastic surgery and burns unit in Accra – the first in Ghana – 2001 saw the opening of a nurse’s accommodation hostel in Korle-Bu Hospital, with its £150,000 construction cost raised entirely in Scotland. Its opening permitted the employment of a full complement of nurses by 2003 and enabled the whole unit, particularly the ‘nurse-intensive’ burns wing, to become fully operational. Today the hostel is fully occupied by nurses working in the centre.
Today, there is a team of plastic surgeons, some of whom received intensive postgraduate training in Scotland, operate the Accra unit. Initially aided by visiting consultants from the UK who gave their services freely a few weeks each year, they now operate wholly independently with only occasional visits from specialists in particularly complex fields.
A second unit consisting of three plastic surgeons commenced operations later in 2001 in Kumasi, the capital of the Ashanti region and the Ghanaian Health Service now employs over 100 staff in the Accra and Kumasi reconstructive surgery units.
The unit in Korle-Bu Hospital, Accra is now a thriving, self-sustaining hub for the dissemination of knowledge and training to visiting surgeons and clinical staff from all over Africa, with international symposiums, teaching courses, and one-to-one training covering all aspects of reconstructive surgical and recovery techniques held there since the unit’s opening. Dr Jack Mustardé’s vision of a self-sustaining reconstructive surgery service in Africa has coming of age. 2018 saw Korle-Bu’s inauguration of a brand new, state of the art burns ICU complex, fully funded by monies raised in Ghana.
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