Mid Yorks medics on mission to Ghana | News

Medics from Mid Yorkshire Teaching NHS Trust travelled to Ghana to carry out hernia operations with the charity Operation Hernia on two missions to treat patients in need of help.

Mr Adeshina Fawole, Consultant General Surgeon and Trustee of Operation Hernia, and Miss Hannah Welbourn, Consultant Colorectal and General Surgeon, went with senior theatre practitioners Melanie Precious and Vicky Armitage, to the Takoradi region in Ghana.

At the same time, Mr Chris Macklin, Consultant Colorectal and General Surgeon, joined a colleague from Chesterfield Hospital on an Operation Hernia mission to the Baptist Medical Centre in the Nalerigu region of Ghana.

In total more than a hundred patients were operated on and treated for large and disabling hernias, including six children, one of which was just over one year old.

Mr Fawole said:

“Operation Hernia aims to treat hernias in less privileged counties like Ghana where they can be quite common, and if left untreated can grow much larger than you see in the UK, so it is also a learning experience for us.

“It was a pleasure to be able to travel to Ghana and for us to do what we could to help improve the lives of others. We also provided some training for local doctors so they can carry out operations themselves and become self-sufficient.

“We operated on patients, including young children, who without the treatment could have gone on to have serious health problems that could be fatal. I am incredibly proud of our team who have been sacrificing their own time over the years to help people from less privileged areas of the world.”

In Africa, inguinal hernia repair is one of the most common types of surgery carried out. Unfortunately, there are not many doctors trained to do it, and the distance patients must travel for the surgery can be very far.