EDITORIAL OF THE WEST AFRICAN COLLEGE OF SURGEONS
As is commonly known, the West African College of Surgeons (WACS) has just clocked 52years, and has sprung up from a “Mustard Seed” as described in the History Book of the College “Knife in Hand”, planted and nurtured by the Late Past President Prof. Victor Anomah Ngu, to become a formidable Postgraduate Medical College in the West African Subregion. It started as the Association of Surgeons of West Africa consisting of about 25 surgeons at its inauguration in 1960, and transformed to the West African College of Surgeons in 1973. It later became one of the constituent Colleges of the West African Postgraduate Medical College together with the West African College of Physicians (WACP), West African College of Nurses (WACN) and West African Postgraduate College of Pharmacists (WAPCP) - all overseen by the West African Health Community. WACS alone consisted of Francophone and Anglophone members.
The West African College of Surgeons at its inception consisted of six Faculties with 41 Fellows. Today there are seven Faculties with proposals to create two more, and over 4,000 Fellows from the 17 member countries of the West African sub-region.
The College has embarked on several activities far and wide over the years, all revolving around postgraduate surgical training, fellowship examination and certification. The theoretical aspect of the training has developed to include manuscript writing, health management and ethics, and culminates in a dissertation. Some College courses are compulsory for all trainees, others are compulsory for specific specialties.
Basic surgical skills courses are to become compulsory with additional cognate skills geared towards each specialty. Institutions are visited and accredited for training depending on their human and material facilities.
In its growth, the College has pioneered harmonization with the other National Colleges` and Francophone training programs, to facilitate and determine reciprocities and recognition of equivalents. This will ultimately allow for free flow of surgeons in the sub-region to the needy areas.
The issue of rural postings and Membership of the College is seriously being pursued, in order to strengthen the middle level surgical manpower that is desperately lacking in all the countries of the sub-region. This in effect will allow certification at the Part I level.
The West African College of Surgeons has developed strong relationships with other surgical colleges such as the American College of Surgeons (ACS) and the International Federation of Surgical Colleges (IFSC) for many years. In fact our esteemed Past President Professor Olajide O. Ajayi is a Past President of the IFSC. Similarly, linkages are being forged nearer home, within Africa. Examples are the Association of Surgeons of South Africa (ASSA), Colleges of Medicine of South Africa (CMSA), College of Surgeons of East Central and South Africa (COSECSA), as well as being foundation members of the Pan African Association of Surgeons (PAAS). With such stakeholders we tend to experience and collaborate on similar constraints, challenges and disease patterns.
In reaching out to the diaspora, groups of Fellows of the College with their colleagues are contributing their skills in the form of service provision and training. The WACS UK Forum is one such group and the Association of Academic Surgery (AAS) another.
The West African Journal of Medicine was established and published jointly by the West African College of Surgeons and the West African College of Physicians in English with the abstract also in French. Unlike the National Postgraduate Medical Journal, it is a journal of the West African sub-region.
The exponential growth of the WACS in terms of Faculties and Fellows needing to disseminate their research findings locally led the College, under the able leadership of the then current President Professor O. O. Mbonu to recognize the need for the creation of a journal published solely by the West African College of Surgeons.
This initiative was brought to fruition under the Chairmanship of Prof. R. O. Ofoegbu and the Editor-in-Chief Professor Benjamin T. Ugwu, and the journal was launched in both French and English at the 51st Annual Scientific Conference of the College in Dakar Senegal in 2011. As evidence of the integration of Francophone and Anglophone, we have to commend the support given by our Francophone brothers, Professor Herve Yangni-Angate and Professor Serigne Gueye for their swift French translation.
With the advent of the Membership status, ultimately the training for Part II Fellowship certification will tend towards subspecialisation. The Journal of the West African College of Surgeons (JWACS) which publishes manuscripts in full in both English and French will provide an avenue for the increase in research papers which will without doubt accompany this achievement.
This journal could not have come at a more opportune time in the history of the College. Its bilingual quality makes it unique. Finally as far as journals go, it is the only journal of surgery representing the sub-region.
Professor O. K. Ogedengbe FWACS.
President, West African College of Surgeons.