The Governing Council of the University for Development Studies has appointed Prof. Stephen Tabiri as the new Dean of the School of Medicine and Health Sciences (SMHS).

Stephen Tabiri is a Professor of Surgery with a central research interest in Applied Health to Improve Patient Outcomes Following Major Surgeries. He 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. Prof. Tabiri played an active role in the effort to regularize medical students who have trained in other jurisdictions outside Ghana by taking licensing examinations with the Medical and Dental Council of Ghana.

He 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 26 peer-reviewed Scientific Publications to his credit.

Prof 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 Global Health Unit of the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR), University of Birmingham, UK.

Prof. Stephen Tabiri was formerly the Vice-Dean of UDS-SMHS before taking up his current appointment. He succeeds Prof. Francis Abantanga as Dean and, his tenure begins from September 1, 2020.

We wish you well in your new era of leadership.