Professor Stephen Tabiri, MD, PhD, FGCS, FACS, FWACS, MEd (Adm).
Dean, UNIVERSITY FOR DEVELOPMENT sTUDIES School of medicine
Consultant Surgeon, Tamale Teaching Hospital
The professor of surgery teaches surgery at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. He is responsible for postgraduate training in surgery and the convenor of Ghana College of Physicians and Surgeons’ Basic Surgical Science Training Course in the Tamale Teaching Hospital. He was very instrumental in the effort to regularize medical students who have been trained in other jurisdictions outside Ghana by taking licensing examinations with the Medical and Dental Council of Ghana.
Prof. Tabiri attained a Doctor of Medicine (MD) in Kharkov, Ukraine in 1997 and went on to attain a Doctor of Philosophy in Clinical Surgery (PhD) at the same university in 2004. He became a fellow of the Ghana College of Surgeons (FGCS), Accra, Ghana and a fellow of the American College of Surgeons (FACS), Chicago, USA in 2011 and 2015 respectively. Prof Tabiri holds a Master’s Degree in Educational Administration and Management (Med. Admin) from the University of Cape-Coast, Ghana. Additionally, he became a fellow of the West African College of Surgeons (FWACS), Dakar, Senegal in 2019 and has about forty-five (45) peer-reviewed scientific publications to his credit.
Professor Tabiri is the Ghana National Lead of Global Surgery and as a co-applicant secured more than £3.9 million in research funding to improve surgical care and outcomes in the low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). He has successfully established a Global Surgery Ghana Hub in Tamale, with the objective of building and sustaining surgical research throughout Ghana. He was recently appointed as a co-director of the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) on Global Health Unit in the University of Birmingham, UK.
Before he took up his current appointment, He was the vice-dean of UDS-SoM.
Stephen is a native of Odumase in the Sunyani West Municipality in Bono Region of Ghana. His parents, the late Opanin Kofi Dwaah and Maame Akosua Nyarko (Akosua Kraah), were peasant framers.
As part of his activities to give back to society what he has benefitted, he is involved in outreach programmes to bring surgical care to the doorstep of those who need them most throughout Ghana. The beneficiary communities so far include communities in the Upper East and West Regions, the Northern Savanna, as well as the Bono, Bono East and Volta Regions. He is the general secretary of Ghana Hernia Society (an NGO) helping people living with hernias. He is also the director of NIHR, UK Ghana Hub on Global Surgery. He is a substantive member of Ghana Country Coordinating Mechanism (CCM) of global fund to fight HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria, representing the academic constituency in Ghana.