Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng (Prof.) is a Ghanaian Cardiothoracic Surgeon who was a former Chief Executive Officer of the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital in Accra. He established the National Cardiothoracic Centre teaching young surgeons.
He is also the director of Ghana’s National Cardiothoracic Centre, and currently President of the Ghana Heart Foundation and the Ghana Red Cross Society.
Prof. Frimpong-Boateng was elected a Fellow of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences in December 2002.
Prof. Frimpong-Boateng had his secondary education at Sekondi College in Sekondi in the Western Region of Ghana. He went to the University of Ghana, Legon in 1968 starting with a one-year pre-science course and in 1969 he was admitted as an undergraduate in medicine.
In 1975, he obtained an MB (Bachelor of Medicine) and ChB (Bachelor of Surgery) Degrees at the University of Ghana Medical School. He was the best candidate in the final examination, becoming the winner of the Easmon Prize for being the best student in surgery.
He served as a House Officer or intern 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 in Kumasi in the Ashanti Region.
He left for Germany in 1978 for further studies, and spent more than ten years there, first for language studies at the Goethe Institute at Radolfzell in April and May 1978, then Boppard from June to September of the same year, and eventually specialised in cardiothoracic surgery at the Medizinische Hochschule Hannover (Hannover Medical High School), Germanyin Hanover from October 1978 to December 1988, where he earned several academic qualifications.
He qualified as a general, cardiothoracic and vascular surgeon. He 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. This involved setting up the National Cardiothoracic Centre at the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital as there were no cardiothoracic surgery facilities in the country at the time.
Prof Frimpong-Boateng also runs a charitable foundation, the Ghana Heart Foundation that is responsible for paying for heart surgery for some indigent Ghanaians under his care.
He joined the University of Ghana Medical School as a lecturer in 2000 and was promoted Associate Professor the same year. He was made a full professor in 2002. He also served as the head of the department of Surgery at the University of Ghana Medical School, prior to his current appointment as the Chief Executive of the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital in 2002. He was elected to the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences in December 2002.
In March 2006, Frimpong-Boateng announced his intention to seek the nomination as the candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) for the December 2008 national presidential election. He was among the 17 presidential hopefuls who lost to then candidate, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, at the party’s national congress held at the University of Ghana, Legon campus in Accra
He is currently the Minister of Science, Environment, Technology and Innovation in the Akufo-Addo’s government.
Prof. Frimpong-Boateng’s father, Kofi Frimpong, died from chest injuries he sustained in a road traffic accident prior to his birth. That, he said, was one factor that compelled him to become a heart surgeon so as to save lives.
He has a wife, Agnes, with whom he has five children, one of whom is a promising athlete. Prof. Frimpong-Boateng is a farmer. He has an ostrich farm which is first of its kind in Ghana, in the village of Dedukope, in the Volta Region.
He also grows jatropha and extracts the oil for the production of bio-diesel. Prof. Frimpong-Boateng runs a CNC machine tool centre that is able to produce spare parts with computer precision at the Free Zones enclave in the port city of Tema.
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