Dr. Barnabas Alayande
Member of the High-Level Council
Assistant Professor of Surgery and Co-Chair of the Centre for Equity in Global Surgery, University of Global Health Equity (UGHE), Rwanda
Dr. Barnabas Tobi Alayande is a general surgeon and Assistant Professor of Surgery at the University of Global Health Equity (UGHE), Rwanda, where he also serves as Co-Chair of the Centre for Equity in Global Surgery and Programme Director for the MSc in Global Health Delivery (Global Surgery Option). He is clinical faculty within the Department of Surgery, Division of Clinical Medicine, at UGHE/Butaro Level 2 Teaching Hospital, and Adjunct Clinical Assistant Professor at Creighton University.
Dr. Alayande is passionate about equity-based solutions in global surgical care and works to advance surgical access for underserved populations through education, research, innovation, and improvisation tailored to low- and middle-income country contexts, with a particular focus on sub-Saharan Africa. He serves as Secretary General of the Pan-African Surgical Healthcare Forum (PASHeF), Chair of the Association for Academic Surgery's Academic Advancement Committee, past Chair of its Global Affairs Committee, and UGHE Co-Director of the Operation Smile–UGHE–Nkafu Policy Institute Global Surgery Advocacy Programmes.
His academic and professional background spans medicine and surgery, public health, global surgery, theology, and business. A specialist in general surgery with interests in trauma care and human factors, Dr. Alayande has conducted pilot randomised controlled trials in thyroid surgery and benign anorectal disease in resource-limited settings.
Dr. Alayande trained in medicine at the University of Ilorin — a WHO Collaborating Centre for Community-Based Education and Service — and completed his surgical residency with the National Postgraduate Medical College of Nigeria, with additional training at the West African College of Surgeons. His early career included service as a National Youth Service Corps Camp Medical Director, Community Health Team Chair, and Medical Officer overseeing 19 local government health facilities serving 4.9 million people. He later served as a volunteer surgeon with the Faith Alive Foundation, establishing surgical systems for underserved HIV/AIDS patients in North-Central Nigeria.
Dr. Alayande completed a two-year Global Surgery Fellowship with the Harvard Program in Global Surgery and Social Change, where he served as Chief Research Fellow. He also completed the Global Surgery Certificate at Oxford University and the University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business Executive Leadership in Global Surgery course. He is a Fogarty Global Health Fellow (Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health), a Harvard Macy Institute alumnus in Medical Education, and holds a Master of Business Administration and a Master of Science in Public Health from the University of Suffolk, UK.
His contributions to the field have been recognised with numerous awards, including the Baxiram S. & Kankuben B. Gelot Community Surgeons Travel Award (American College of Surgeons), the Harvard PGSSC Alumni Award, the Trauma Association of Canada Award, the Fogarty Global Health Fellowship, and several early-career and academic prizes. His scholarship spans surgical ethics and equity, disparities in trauma care access, surgical quality and history, COVID-era surgical systems, improvisation in surgery, and the integration of artificial intelligence in surgical care.
Dr. Alayande serves as Academic Editor for PLOS Global Public Health, Associate Editor for BMJ Global Health, and on the editorial board of the East and Central Africa Journal of Surgery. He is a Fellow of the National Postgraduate Medical College of Nigeria, COSECSA, the International College of Surgeons, the American College of Surgeons, and the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh's Faculty of Rural, Remote, and Humanitarian Healthcare, and a member of the Rwanda Surgical Society.
