Medical School for University for Development Studies, Tamale

Historically Medical Education is devoted to teaching the knowledge and skills used in the prevention and treatment of disease and to developing the methods and objectives appropriate to the study of the still unknown factors that produce disease. The 19th Century discoveries of Louis Pasteur which showed the relation of micro-organism to certain diseases, Joseph Listers’ application of Pasteurs concepts to surgery and the studies of Rudolf Virchow and Robert -Koch brought stimulus to the practice of medicine and surgery. The findings attracted attention to the need of medical schools for better laboratory facilities, better access to patients in hospitals, a larger better trained teaching staff. The distinctive feature of medical education is the thoroughness with which theoretical and scientific knowledge are fused with what an experienced teacher will utilize for the practical responsibility of taking care of human beings. It must be remembered that the clinical teacher has an immediate and absolute responsibility to his patients as well as to his students. The double burden of theory and practice is all the heavier when great advances are being made in medical science. After this short historical exploration, one would have to come home to see that although the question of training doctors locally had always interested both the University and the Government, formal consideration of its feasibility was not initiated until the early fifties and between 1951 and 1963. In 1960 the University Council, Legon appointed a British Medical Educator to be the first Dean of the faculty of Medicine. Meanwhile the Ghana Government had made a request for assistance to the US Government and an agreement was later reached to build a National Medical Centre near the University Campus at Legon with substantial financial assistance from USAID. As a result of this change in general policy, the first Dean designate withdrew his acceptance of the post of Dean and Professor of Medicine. Subsequently an American Medical Educator was therefore selected and designated as the first Dean and in October, 1962 the first batch of students were admitted into the University for a two-year premedical course. However in 1963 before the final contract between the two governments could be signed the second dean also resigned. 4t this juncture, Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah announced his vision for the establishment of the Ghana Medical School from purely Ghanaian Resources. The late Dr. C.O. Easmon, the surgeon in chief was given full responsibility as Dean and Prof of Surgery. A surgeon agreed to take the interim assignment of acting head of the department of Anatomy and a physiologist training abroad was recalled to assume duty as the acting head of the department of physiology. This arrangement made it possible to proceed to the preclinical part of the course. Arrangement to integrate the medical school formally into the University were concluded in 1969 in time to see the first batch of thirty-two (32) medical graduates to be trained in Ghana. The Ghana Medical School then became the University of Ghana Medical School in October, 1969. Almost parallel to this development the idea of a medical school in Kumasi arose as early as the sixties when Dr. R.P. Baffour was Vice Chancellor of the UST (1961 - 1967). At that time plans were drawn up for a new University Hospital which was intended to be the nucleus of a teaching hospital. The new hospital

Source: KNUST