Urology & Gynecology

Urology

SIH's urology department will be headed by Dr. Franklin Danki Sillong, a urological surgeon based in Ngaoundéré for more than twenty years. In 2005, with Dr. Thilo Schwalenberg, he co-founded northern Cameroon's first urology department at the Protestant Hospital of Ngaoundéré, after practising as a senior urologist in Leipzig.

His work goes beyond clinical practice. He headed Cameroon's first permanent obstetric fistula repair center, opened in Ngaoundéré in 2014 with the support of the United Nations Population Fund, and has run humanitarian fistula surgery campaigns as far as South Sudan. He has also published on prostate cancer screening in the north, where diagnosis comes too late for want of investigation: his work covered the use of the rapid PSA test in Ngaoundéré and Garoua.

The department will treat prostate enlargement and prostate cancer, urinary stones, recurrent urinary infections, voiding disorders and fistula surgery. It will have a lithotripter, which breaks up stones without opening, and will draw on the hospital's ultrasound and CT scanner for diagnosis.

Gynecology

The department will also host gynecology, within the same care pathway as urology. Both specialties will draw on the same technical platform, with the hospital's ultrasound and laboratory: a single appointment will allow a patient to be seen, investigated and directed, with no trip to another facility.

Gynecology will provide follow-up consultations and care for the most common reasons for referral: menstrual disorders, pelvic pain, infections, contraception and menopause follow-up. The exact range of procedures will be settled before opening.

The two specialties meet on obstetric fistulas, injuries that involve both the urinary tract and the genital tract. Bringing urology and gynecology together in one department means these patients can be treated in one place, from examination to surgery.