The black surgeon giving hope to the vulnerable in Africa
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Inside a hospital operating room in Ghana’s volta regional town of Ho, doctors spend hours over a one-week period to perform essential reconstructive surgeries on hundreds of people many with accidental and congenital deformities including burns and Goiter.
The leader of the team is the US-based black celebrated plastic surgeon, Dr. Michael Obeng who is also considered controversial for surgeries he performed in the past that attracted a lot of criticisms globally.
He has reattached a limb, removed ribs to streamline the waist and undertaken cosmetic surgeries. The surgeries he organized in Ghana, his home country though, are his way of giving back to the continent he comes from.
“It feels great to be able to come back and be able to work with local doctors, local healthcare professionals to help people,” he told Africa Feeds.
Obeng since 2008 has successfully operated his humanitarian project called R.E.S.T.O.R.E, where he mobilizes surgeons to performs FREE reconstructive surgeries for children and adults in African countries.
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He said such free surgeries are essential in Africa where patients hardly can afford them. “When it comes to reconstructive surgery on this continent [Africa] – there is a huge gap, there is a big need for reconstructive surgeons,” he said.
According to him, his team is providing a reconstructive surgery to reconstruct when there are defects from previous surgeries “accidents, when there are tumors, and we don’t have enough reconstructive surgeons.”
Putting smiles on people’s faces
17-year-old Grace Konadu is one of the beneficiaries of Obeng’s surgeries in Ghana. She was born with two genitals – male and female- but for all these years she has identified as a female.
Konadu was excited about the opportunity to have the male organ removed and the female properly reconstructed, so she can freely live her life. “So, the doctors said I have a vagina, so they can take off the penis and properly reconstruct the female organ,” she said.
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Obeng and his colleagues – from Africa and Germany, spent hours to successfully operate on Konadu. “I am so happy that I can now completely feel as a woman. My parents will be happy, likewise my entire family,” Konadu said.
Obeng also expressed excitement about being able to help people like Konadu. “I am glad that we have the right people around to be able to help this young lady,” he said.
For Obeng, using his talent to help the vulnerable is all he dreams of. “It saddens me when I see people like or not just her but people who have been afflicted with things that it is not the fault of theirs, they were born with it.”
“As a society we should not be stigmatizing these patients, we should embrace them, and I feel great that the team would be able to restore her confidence and affirm the fact that she is a woman,” he added.
Making good use of talent
Obeng isn’t only into reconstructive surgeries. He has performed several controversial surgeries including gender reassignment surgery in Gabon, successfully reattaching a limb, removing ribs to streamline the waist and cosmetic surgeries of the aging face, neck, breast, body, trunk, buttocks, and genitalia. Not everyone is happy with him undertaking such surgeries.
Obeng though defended his decision to perform such surgeries. “I have to make a living. I wasn’t born with a silver spoon; I am not a trust fund baby. I am blessed with a gift, with a talent and my talent is doing surgeries and I have a good eye for beauty,” he said.
According to the surgeon “when people look good, they feel good. When people good, they perform better in everything they do, so you can’t judge somebody because they want to look better – they want to have bigger boobs, they want to have bigger butts, they want to have tiny waist, or they don’t want to have wrinkles.”
Obeng in the past five years has spent nearly half a million dollars of his own money to give back to society through his free reconstructive surgeries.
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Source: Africafeeds.com
