The renowned bariatric Surgeon Professor recently has passed away at age of 79. Born into a family of 9 in a rural area where there were no schools, he tended cows and goats from the time he was a small child. At age 12 he left his village of Wonchi to attend school in Addis Ababa. Without any funds, he performed odd jobs to finance his studies.
With a high school diploma in hand, he went to study medicine in Belgium where he specialized in digestive surgery. Facing the distress of many patients who were often between life and death, Prof. Mitiku invented a ring that is inserted in the upper part of the stomach under laparoscopy. He developed the Laparoscopic Adjustable Gastric Banding (LAGB) technique for the treatment of morbid obesity and he is one of the pioneer surgeons for laparoscopic surgery. Surgical workshops were organized and Prof. Belachew trained more than 300 surgeons from all over the world on how to perform this procedure.
Today, more than one million people have been operated on around the world using this remarkable technique.
Source: Hakim Page