Dr. Ademola Adeyeye bags first black African surgical oncologist certificate in Europe

A Kwara born medical consultant at the University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital, Dr. Ademola Adeyeye has become the first black African to bag European Board Certified Surgical Oncologist (Cancer Surgeon).

Dr. Adeyeye is a Consultant General Surgeon and Surgical Oncologist (cancer surgeon) with the Department of Surgery UITH Ilorin and the Cofounder of Lifefount Hospital, Tanke Ilorin. Dr. Adeyeye is from Omu-aran capital of Irepodun local government area of Kwara state.

A journey he began three years ago is finally over after a rigorous training in ten different cities in seven different countries across four continents has finally yielded positive result.

Speaking to journalists in Ilorin at the weekend, he said “i am proud to finally be the first European Board certified Surgical Oncologist from Nigeria and sub-saharan Africa. I am grateful to everyone especially my teachers, friends and family for all the help and support along the way.

“The training involved going to different European centres for specialization. I spent the last three years going to UK, Spain, Australia, Germany, US and India for the training programmes expanding over a three years period.

“So at the end of the period I wrote three exams, the first exam we have people from all over the world after which they pulled us down to 25 and only 18 of us actually made the final exam and I was the first person from black African to successfully pass the exam.

“So it was actually a rigorous process haven to travel to different countries and experienced different cultures, languages and different people was quite challenging and also interesting too but thank God that it was eventually a success.

This doesn’t come free of charge, some of those things were sponsored by European society of surgical oncologists and some of it I won scholarship and grants and a lot of I spent my money and family especially my wife was very supportive in providing the funds through a lot of sacrifices which worth it so that we can bring expert care to our country.

“This has not happened before in the last fifteen years when the surgical speciality was introduced in Europe.

This reason why this important is because we have patients with cancer but nobody has really gone deep though people have been having certification but the European society was very happy with this to have somebody from black has finally bagged this kind of certification.

“This implies that we are trying to bring in European standard of treatment into our cancer care in African but the challenge we have now is that people get to see different kinds of doctors for cancer treatment when we know that there are specialists for each kind of condition.

“We want to use this opportunity to encourage more physicians as possible to go into this kind of training so that we can have more people in the field.

The oncologist stressed that patients have the fear that once they are diagnosed with cancer they feel that the end in the world but cancer is treatable, curable and can be managed depending on the stage patient is in.

He said “the main challenge we have in this part of the world is that patients are not able to afford cancer treatment. You Nigeria is raked one of the country having the most extremely poor people about 85 million people and cannot afford basis in medical treatment.

The National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) can only cover about 15 percent of the population so patients come to see doctors for unable to afford treatment.

“The only way is that government should increase NHIS strength in covering for cancer patients in the country.

On the involvement of Nigeria Medical Association Dr Adeyeye stressed that they have been supportive in providing the platform for interaction with colleagues to gain ideas of moving things forward.

He said “my colleagues have been very supportive most especially they have to cover for me at work so that my work didn’t suffer whenever I want to travel.

I want also appreciate the European society considering the fact that I was coming from Africa they sponsored some of my trainings and made me the representative from Nigeria coordinating most of their projects in Nigeria.

On the level of cancer awareness in Nigeria he stressed that people are aware but he called on the government to channel more facilities for cancer treatment and provide incentives for cancer patients.