Founder and President of the Foundation of Orthopedics and Complex Spine (FOCOS), Prof. Oheneba Boachie-Adjei joined a team of experts for panel discussions at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) held on June 24th to June 25th, 2019, at their Cultural Centre in Athens, Greece.
This year being the seventh edition, SNF brought together 65 high-caliber speakers from various backgrounds, diverse disciplines and spaces, to engage in conversations and debates about subject matters in their areas of expertise.
The theme for this year’s conference was “UNTITLED” and, as one could imagine, left room for a wide range of topics. Some of the topics included: The Cognitive Foundations of Discrimination and Exclusion, Humanity and Nature, Spectacle of Society, Empathy, Forgiveness and Rehabilitation as civic virtues, Defining Leadership in the 21st Century, Playing with Complexity, A Post American Century, to name a few.
In his opening remarks, co-President of SNF, Andreas C. Dracopoulos, highlighted the importance of foundations strengthening their existing relationship with partners, by citing an example with the Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) in New York. “The SNF’s longstanding partnership with one grantee, the Hospital for Special Surgery in NYC, has multiplied into relationships with organizations on three continents—from HSS in New York, to FOCOS Orthopedic Hospital in Accra, Ghana, and back here to Athens with our own incubated organization, Regeneration & Progress, offering much-needed health and sports services to our society at large,” he said.
The Founder and President of FOCOS together with three other experts, Drs. Thomas Sculco, Peter Sculco and Panagiotis Koulouvalis, participated in a panel discussion on the topic Healthcare, Innovation and Philanthropy. Each member on the panel had at one time in their career been associated with the renowned Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City as trainees or practicing surgeons.
When Prof. Boachie-Adjei took his turn to speak on the panel, he described the mission of FOCOS Hospital as committed towards providing optimum orthopedic care to improve the quality of life among Ghanaians and others throughout Africa. “Over the past 20 years, FOCOS has treated close to 60,000 patients from 53 countries and performed over 3,000 major orthopedic procedures at no or very affordable cost,” he said.
Prof. Boachie-Adjei specifically emphasized his aspirations to build capacity in clinical care, research, education and outreach and mentioned the training of surgeons at the hospital and the outreach programs in Ethiopia and Sierra Leone. He further explained the innovative works at the hospital to manage complex spine deformity, which had not been previously described in the literature, but now have been expressly classified as Gamma, Omega and Alpha Spines. All 4 members on the panel recounted the support they had received from SNF to enable them meet the needs of the populations they are serving.
In his closing remarks, the Founder and President of FOCOS appealed to SNF and the public at large to support the endowment campaign that he is launching to raise funds to support the hospital in perpetuity with the goals of patient sponsorship, capacity-building and infrastructure upgrade and maintenance. He added that, “You can become a friend of FOCOS and benefactor by clicking: https://focoshospitalgh.com/endowment-fund/”.
Boachie-Adjei delivering at the SNF panel discussion
SNF is an international philanthropic organization, which provides grants in the areas of arts and culture, education, health and medicine, as well as social welfare. SNF funds organizations and seeks out projects that exhibit strong leadership and sound management that are expected to achieve a broad, lasting and positive social impact. The foundation actively supports projects that facilitate the formation of public-private partnerships, as an effective means for serving public welfare.
