Today’s guest is Associate Professor Daniel Abebe. He is a general surgeon. He is a medical director and an instructor at Yekatit 12 Hospital Medical College. Apart from saving the lives of many of his compatriots, he had served different government hospitals in various capacities. A mentor, he has been helping a number of medical students get on their feet in the avenue of medical science. Physicians, nowadays, they are contributing their share in the effort which has been taken to take the Ethiopian health sector to a new level of success. The Ethiopian Herald had a short stay with Dr. Daniel with the purpose of familiarizing his personal and professional life with readers. He had touched upon a number of interesting issues. Excerpts:
Would you brief us about yourself?
I was born and raised in Addis Ababa. I attended primary and secondary schools at Hibret Frea as well as Menen respectively found in Addis Ababa. I completed high school with high flying colors – straight A’s – and grew to be the talk of the school in the blink of an eye. Sooner or later, I joined the Gondor Medical School. Hence, pursuing education I consecrated seven years including the first one that I spent at Natural Science Faculty found at Arat Kilo. After completing my undergraduate studies, I came back to Addis Ababa.
During our time, there were finger counted medical schools across the country such as Tikur Anbessa, Gondor, and Jimma Medical schools.
Nowadays, we have several medical schools in different parts of the country. The health sector of the country is portraying an astounding up swing.
Flipping back to gist, at that specific juncture, the Ministry of Health was responsible for assigning graduates to various parts of the country and thus as a general practitioner I was deployed in Chiro found at Oromia State.
What was the next move, then?
I kickstarted working at Chiro Hospital .I spent six fruitful years. In due course, I made up my mind to return to Addis Ababa for further education. As I was sponsored by Oromia State, I had to serve the state for five years. When I came to Addis Ababa, I learnt that Zewditu Hospital was hunting for physicians. I applied for the post right away. The official promised that soon they would send me to the Black Lion Hospital for specialization.
As I had already served at Chiro Hospital for five years, I went back there for resignation and clearance.
I was excellent at surgery. I was almost on familiar terms with the whole lot.
I could do anything that surgeons can do specially the gynecologists one. Hence, I did not want to take the same course or repeat the same thing that I had already mastered. True to the promised made to me by the officials, I joined the Black Lion Hospital and studied general surgery. I studied there for four years.
What inspired you to pursue surgery?
When I was in Chiro, many pregnant mothers were reffered to the hospital where I used to work for the reason that they did not have adequate money to go to Addis Ababa, Dire Dawa or Harare. Sadly, most of them were leading a hand-to-mouth life. Sooner or later, as there were no gynecologists in our hospital, most pregnant women were urged to return to their respective homes and recline on their deathbed. In a similar fashion, many pregnant women gave up the ghost before they make their dream come true–kissing their new born and lead a blissful life of motherhood.
If truth be told, I did not sit idle. I was constantly making an effort to get rid of the problem or Chimera claiming a death toll of expecting mothers once and for all.
What efforts did the hospital exert to save the lives pregnant women?
As I have tried to mention so far, the situation concerning pregnant women was going downhills every so often. The situation was heartrending. When I was at a loss what to do, I took the case straight to Care Ethiopia,NGO. After they thoroughly slept on the case, they helped me study Emergency Obstetric and newborn care and gynecology training for three months at Adama Hospital. Hence, I jump-started doing surgery on pregnant women with serious cases. There were times when I conducted surgery on seven or so pregnant women a day. In my stay in Chiro,fighting tooth and nail, I managed to spare many pregnant women who were at death’s door from the angel of death. To the surprise of many, despite my parents plea, I was not in the habit of coming to Addis Ababa even during religious holidays, as there were no doctors who would take care of delivering mothers on a deathbed.
We were rendering patients coming from Mechara, Hirna, Bedessa, Gelemsso and other states. Honestly speaking, it was difficult to entertain all of them. We were buried under work loads. The thing was, we managed to save the lives of countless mothers and children. When a gynecologist was hired, I left the hospital in next to no time.
What does it take to be a successful surgeon?
To be a surgeon, one need have a good understanding about human anatomy in addition to being familiar which part of the body interlinked with which part. In the absence of these, it will be difficult to achieve the desired goal. Moreover, a good surgeon needs a mental strength, endurance as well as patience. Apart from tending patients, a surgeon must be sharp at avoiding errors. Surgeons experience stress when they carry out surgery. On the contrary, when surgeons repair a certain thing fruitfully,they grow to be infinitely happy and become proud of their accomplishments. Tackling a number of surgeries and updating one’s knowledge from time to time could play a major role in handling surgery.
How was surgical education?
To begin with, surgery is a discipline where a medical doctor cuts the human body to get rid of ailment, nurse back the sick to health and make an effort to save lives.
People may encounter countless accidents and end up losing their bodies. And as a result, a surgeon attempts to repair and heal the injured parts. To come to the point, surgery is an art by itself, it needs a special skill and talent. Being familiar with the theory has nothing to do with translating it into practice. In other words, though one knows the nuts and bolts of the theoretical aspects of surgery, it would be easier said than done to achieve the desired goal during surgery with no trouble. Unless God blesses surgeons’ nimble hand,sharp mind and tender heart they may end up losing patients. Surgery is really a challenging job, which needs concentration and experience apart from being gifted in the profession.
Though some medical doctors are brilliant, they fail to save lives. In actual fact, surgery obligates knowledge-and-experience-based decision making. When one comes across a pregnant woman due to give birth, one should be able to decide without delay whether to do surgery through operation or labor. If the surgeon is tardy in decision making, either the child or the mother will die. Therefore, knowing when and how to do surgery immensely helps the doctor to save lives. In brief, surgery needs knowledge, skill and being gifted.
What care must be done while conducting surgery?
The most important thing to be taken into account while conducting surgery is familiarizing oneself with various techniques of handling the different organs of our bodies. If one does not know how to handle the parts, our organs may be deformed because of lack of proper handling. Touching them, obligates careful handling.
If not, the structure will be maladjusted. This in turn may result in infection and swelling, among others. Surgeons need to pay full attention during surgery. Otherwise, they may end up making mistakes. The surgeon is just like a pilot. If one’s attention is distracted, something unexpected may happen and as a result one’s attention should not be hijacked even for a fraction of a second, even.
What are the major challenges during operation?
There are challenges that most surgeons face when they are at the peak of their task. One needs to be very wise and good at decision making. As one encounters a number of patients with different problems, one needs to handle the problem carefully. For example, if a certain doctor is going to do a surgery predominantly on glands, s/he needs to know how to make a decision. After s/he has opened the stomach of a certain patient, a very important decision need be made based on the situation of the patient.
The thing is, the problem may be deep-rooted or may be attached to blood vessels and thus prudential measures should be made as one may end up losing one’s life in a jiffy. After opening a stomach if the surgeon does not understand the problem of a certain patient, s/he should close the stomach. Above all, operation needs quick decision making. Some problems may seem easy to solve but later could prove knoty.
What is the most difficult part in surgery?
To start with, the hardest part of surgery is to make a decision based on symptoms and the succeeding groundwork on how to handle the case. If one encounters any complication, one needs to be very careful not to cross the red line prior to knowing how to troubleshoot a problem. A surgeon does a surgery he must be sure a colleague that helps him out is around for the safety of the patient. If not, surgeons may end up losing lives. A surgeon may sometimes encounter complicated problems which may be difficult to understand. This time, one needs to be very careful not to jump to conclusion.
How long does it take for an individual to be a very good surgeon?
According to international standard, general surgery courses take four solid years. The same holds true for Ethiopia. The time duration is enough. What matters is not the course that one takes in four years time but the number of surgeries one performs in given time frame. For instance, one is expected to do surgery on 200 to 300 appendixes. The problem is one may not get a chance to operate on ten appendixes and thus it is difficult to conclude that one has got enough experience that renders him efficient with the aforementioned number. If truth be told, there is no fixed number. As a general practitioners out from colleges, general practitioners need to do a lot of surgeries. After graduation they have to develop their confidence. They may be assigned at far flung corners of the country to handle surgery without helper.
What was Yekatit 12 Hospital like when you took the provost position?
When I was transferred to Yekatite 12 Hospital, I made a lot of changes and improvements. There were 700 employees when I was serving at Zewditu Hospital. When I came here, there were around 1280 employees. In the structure, all together there were around 2025 posts for employees. That means there are others who are going to be hired. The college was like a new born baby. When I joined the Medical college the first batch did not graduate. Students were in the final year. They were fifth year student. We called them Alpha Batch. I am very lucky in this regard. At first, many challenges surfaced in the hospital. But as we went along we were able to reach where we are today. We kick started from scratch and grew to be successful. There were no students’ dormitory just then and as a result students had suffered a lot trekking long distances to lecture rooms. But at this point in time, we have rented a Ground plus eight building around the hospital and thus there is no transport cost. For constructing our own building, we had secured land around Basha Woldie free of charge from the government of Ethiopia. It is fenced off.
Students of the second batch will graduate in May. We have almost started preparation. Moreover, we have been carrying out various fruitful activities. As there were no curtains, patients were scorched by the sun. When they were at a loss what to do, they were papering the window pan with newspapers. At this point in time, we have covered the whole building with a curtain. We did a lot of fulfilling inputs. There were no chairs for patients in the past. At the moment, we have bought three-seater chairs for patients. There were no pharmacies and so forth.
There was as well a kitchen problem. It was very old. The right food was not given to patients. Its cleanliness was questionable. Ninety-four year is on since the establishment of the institute. The result of evaluation was always zero regarding the kitchen. At the moment, we have transformed the kitchen. This being the case, we have been giving out the right food to patients.