Longtime missionary doctor to Cameroon honoured by American College of Surgeons
By Hans Ngala
Prof. Jim Brown, a longtime missionary surgeon to Cameroon has been recognized by the American College of Surgeons (ACS) for his nearly 20 years of providing care “to medically under-served patients”.
Dr. Brown worked in Cameroon since 2003 at Mbingo Baptist Hospital, NW Region of Cameroon, and helped grow the Pan-African Academy of Christian Surgeons (PAACS) program there. PAACS is a specialty program for Christian surgeons who are trained to perform surgeries in African countries with a Christian approach to medicine and not focusing on making money.
“During his time as a United States Navy surgeon and as a private practitioner, Dr. Brown joined several medical mission trips to Latin America, Asia, and Africa. In 2003, he traveled to Northern Cameroon for 2 and 1/2 weeks, where he witnessed an overwhelming lack of surgical services and determined surgical training could assist in addressing these gaps. In 2008, Dr. Brown and his wife moved to Cameroon full time, partnering with the Pan African Academy of Christian Surgeons (PAACS), a nonprofit dedicated to high-quality surgical training in Africa” said ACS in a statement which CNA saw.
Dr. Brown is also credited with helping with the creation of a Residency Review Committee comprised of all the PAACS training program directors, the chief hospital administrator, the senior nursing supervisor, the head chaplain, and the chief residents from each program at Mbingo Baptist Hospital.
The PAACS program in Cameroon started in the early 2000s at Banso Baptist Hospital (BBH) before being relocated to Mbingo Baptist Hospital where it has continued to train Cameroonian and foreign medical doctors in a Christian approach to surgery as a tool to spread the gospel and not just for financial ends. PAACS equally has residents in Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Malawi, and several other Eastern and Southern African countries.
The Cameroon Baptist Convention partners with several Christian medical organizations which send missionaries to Cameroon as doctors, teachers, technicians, etc including Samaritan’s Purse, World Medical Mission, and others to implement programs such as PAACS in Cameroon.
Cameroon has an acute shortage of medical specialists compounded by the mass exodus of medical personnel looking for better pay elsewhere, hence the work of foreign medical personnel like Dr. Brown helps fill the gap tremendously. In a 2022 research paper published by Charles Mvondo, it was revealed that Cameroon has a mere 80 cardiologists for a population of 23 million people. This means that 1 cardiologist attends to roughly 287, 500 people. Cameroon has just 40 ears, nose, and throat (ENT) surgeons for a population of 23 million according to the CBC Health Services with the North West region having only two ENT specialists i.e one at the Regional Hospital in Bamenda and another at Mbingo Baptist Hospital.
