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Celebrating Salamat Ahuoiza, West Africa's first female neurosurgeon

Dr. Salamat Ahuoiza Aliu is a neurosurgeon at National Hospital, Abuja. She is the first indigenous trained female neurosurgeon in Nigeria is also the first female to be certified a neurosurgeon in West Africa.

Dr. Aliu is an indigene of Okenne Local Government Area of Kogi State but was born in Ilorin, Kwara State, where she had most of her education up to the university level. She found the area of neurosurgery interesting and intriguing, and then decided to specialize in the discipline.

When an opportunity opened up for her at the Neurosurgery Centre in Sokoto state, she went ahead to train in spite of discouragements and difficulties. The training, which takes about six years to get certified, if there no unforeseen circumstances during the training period, tested both her capacity to handle the pressures of the job as well as managing her job with other family responsibilities.

Since she got certified, she has mentored other four women who are also training as neurosurgeons- two are training in Sokoto, one in Ibadan and another in Enugu. And many more women have considered specializing in neurosurgery.
In 2014, she co-authored a publication, ‘Knotting of a nasogastric feeding tube in a child with head injury: A case report and review of literature’, which has been published on so many websites providing resources for science and medical researchers.

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