A Request from Seare Halefom Kahsay in Mekele , Ethiopia

Description of request

My name is Seare Halefom Kahsay. I am a young neurosurgeon from Ethiopia. I am writing this letter to express my strongest interest to attend spine  Fellowship position . I have completed my residency training in neurosurgery at Addis Ababa University in 2022 and I am currently working as a neurosurgeon at Mekele University College of health Sciences ,Ayder Referal Hospital in Tigray region in northern Ethiopia. I am interested in Spine surgery. I am also an advocate and subscriber of Global neurosurgery. I am applying  fellowship in order to learn and gain nuanced skills and knowledge from the program which I can use to enhance treatment of my patients in Ethiopia.

There are less than 50 neurosurgeons in Ethiopia most of whom are concentrated in the capital Addis Ababa. This number is disproportionately very low for a country of 100 million people.  The limited number of neurosurgeons combined with a huge population has created an immense patient load and long waiting list. The hospital I work at is one of the few centers that provide neurosurgical service in Ethiopia. I am one of the very few neurosurgeons in Northern  Ethiopia and I am responsible for evaluation and management of thousands of neurosurgical patients.

I manage a variety of neurosurgical cases daily including brain and spine trauma, neural tube defects and hydrocephalus, CNS infections including CNS Tuberculosis and brain abscesses, brain and spine Tumors, and degenerative spine diseases: However, most of my patients are spine cases. As a result, I have decided that it is in the best interest of my patients to further my study on spine surgery. I hope to learn from the fellowship noble neurosurgical techniques including occipitocervical fusion, C1/C2 fusion, TLIF/PLIF /ALIF/LLIF, various spine fusion techniques, minimally invasive spine surgery, and endoscopic surgery of the spine.

Neurosurgery is a challenging and humbling discipline; and in my practice I find skull base and occipito-cervical region surgery particularly more complex and challenging. With limited resources and limited equipment, I try my best to give standard care to my patients. However, despite my best efforts, I have significant challenges operating on lesions around these regions. That is why I am applying spine  fellowship   hoping to learn advanced and latest microsurgical skills including percutaneous fusion, Endoscopic spine surgery and noble occipito-cervical surgeries and anterior approach to thoracic and lumbar spine pathologies.