22 WORLD GASTROENTEROLOGY NEWS SEPTEMBER 2015 Editorial | Expert Point of View | Gastro 2015: AGW/WGO | WDHD News | WGO & WGOF News | WGO Global Guidelines | Calendar of Events WGO Inaugurates New Training Centers in Addis Ababa and Lagos Desmond Leddin, MD Chair, WGO Training Centers Committee Victoria General Hospital Halifax, Canada In April 2015 two new WGO Train-ing Centers were opened in Africa. These centers are a welcome addition to the existing African network of centers in Morocco, Egypt, Sudan, and South Africa. The center in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia was developed in partnership with the University of Toronto, the Ethiopian Society of Gastroenterology, and the University of Ethiopia. It is located at the Tikur Anbessa (Black Lion) Hospital in Addis. Dr. Shewaye Abate Bane is the director. The University of Toronto group, of which Dr. Louis Liu is the leader for the GI program, has been working with the University in Addis Ababa for many years, not just in GI but also across the medicine faculty. A residency-training program has been developed which has recently graduated its first GI specialists. The center in Lagos, Nigeria is a partnership between the Nigerian Society of Gastroenterology and La-gos University. Located in the Lagos University Teaching Hospital, Dr. Funmilayo Lesi is the director and has led the initiative. The WGO President, Dr. James To-ouli, performed the formal inaugura-tion of both centers. Although only physically present in Addis Ababa, a video link to Lagos (established by the Coordinator of WGO’s E-Learn-ing Network, Dr. Shuji Shimizu in Japan) allowed Dr. Toouli to com- municate with, and inaugurate, both centers simultaneously. We were very fortunate to have re-ceived support from Karl Storz Endos-copy. A generous donation of exper-tise and equipment has contributed very significantly to the development of these centers. The equipment in the Addis and Lagos centers is, as Dr. Liu ruefully remarked, better than some of his equipment in Toronto. The gen-erosity of Storz, who have also partly equipped the center in Khartoum, has changed GI training in sub-Saharan Africa in a major way. Formerly there were no centers between the Mediter-ranean and South Africa. There are now four and the prospects for future centers are good. Abebe Bekele (Black Lion Hospital CEO), Ara Sarkissian (Storz), James Toouli (WGO presi-dent), Nagi Checri (Storz), Des Leddin (WGO Training Center Director). Louis Liu (University of Toronto), James Toouli (WGO President), Des Leddin (WGO Training Cen-ter Director), Abate Shewaye (University of Ethiopia), Ara Sakissian (Storz), Nagi Checri (Storz), Abdelmounem Abdo (Training Center director Khartoum) and Tiruwork Fikadu (Inaugurate GI graduate, current Ethiopian Association of Gastroenterology Vice President).
ewgn-vol20-issue3-v5_Final
To see the actual publication please follow the link above