The Minister-designate for Science and Technology and former Chief Executive Officer of the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, Dr. Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng has stated that the Hospital has now become a “bigger monster” than it used to be.
The Korle Bu Teaching Hospital, the biggest hospital in West Africa has over the years been in the news for several wrong reasons. Several CEOs have failed to transform the hospital with staff constantly demanding the dismissal of its heads and board members.
Appearing before Parliament’s Appointments Committee Thursday, the former Head of the National Cardiothoracic Centre who wrote a book – Taming a Monster – detailing how he navigated his tenure at the Hospital said Korle Bu has now become a monster that cannot be killed.
“It has become a bigger monster that you cannot kill and you cannot eat,” Dr. Frimpong Boateng said Thursday.
Dr. Frimpong-Boateng’s book is a revealing ‘report’ on how as CEO of Korle Bu Teaching Hospital he attempted to tame the monster the hospital had become.
Profile of Dr. Frimpong-Boateng
Born 1950, Prof. Frimpong-Boateng is a Cardiothoracic Surgeon who established the Cardio Centre some 22 years ago. He was once the Chief Executive Officer of the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital in Accra where he resigned to go into politics in 2006.
He had his secondary education at the Sekondi College in Sekondi in the Western Region and continued to the University of Ghana in 1968 where he started with a one year pre-science course and in 1969 he was admitted as an undergraduate in medicine.
In 1975, he obtained the MB (Bachelor of Medicine) and ChB (Bachelor of Surgery) degrees at the University of Ghana Medical School and was adjudged the best candidate in the final examination. He won the Easmon Prize for being the best student in surgery.
He served as a House Officer at the Departments of Medicine and then Surgery, Korle Bu Teaching Hospital, and later worked as a Medical Officer at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital.
He went to Germany in 1978 for further studies, and spent more than ten years there where he specialised in cardiothoracic surgery at the Medizinische Hochschule Hannover (Hannover Medical High school), Germany in Hanover from October 1978 to December 1988.
He qualified as a general, cardiothoracic and vascular surgeon and subsequently worked as a consultant cardiothoracic surgeon and was one of the pioneers of the heart transplantation programme in Hannover, where he also taught both undergraduate and postgraduate Thorax, Cardio-thoracic and Vascular Surgery.
Prof. Frimpong-Boateng returned to Ghana to practice as Ghana’s first locally based cardiothoracic surgeon and set up the National Cardiothoracic Centre at the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital in 1992 as there were no cardiothoracic surgery facilities in the country at the time.
He is still the President of the Ghana Heart Foundation, the Ghana Red Cross Society and a Professor at the Department of Surgery, Ghana Medical School.
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