History was made at Johns Hopkins University on Friday, March 17th, 2017 as Ghanaian, Nancy Abu-Bonsrah, became the first Black female resident neurosurgeon at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. This news came on a day which is also known as Match Day, a day that medical students around the country find out which hospitals they’ll practice their residency.

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“I am very much interested in providing medical care in underserved settings, specifically surgical care,” she said in a statement. “I hope to be able to go back to Ghana over the course of my career to help in building sustainable surgical infrastructure. I will be matching into neurosurgery, a field that I am greatly enamoured with, and hope to utilise those skills in advancing global surgical care,” said Abu-Bonsrah.

According to CNN, in the 30 years that Johns Hopkins School of Medicine’s neurosurgical department has been accepting residents, there has never been a Black woman in the ranks. The prestigious program accepts just two to five residents and is ranked second best in the country. Among its most notable alumni is Dr Ben Carson, who is now the United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.

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Meet Nancy Abu-Bonsrah the first black female neurosurgeon at the Johns Hopkins Hospital

  • Nancy Abu-Bonsrah hails from Ghana.
  • She is the daughter of Seth Abu-Bonsrah and Georgina Abu-Bonsrah.
  • She is from Fomena Adansi in Ashanti region of Ghana. She is a royal princess of the Bonsrah Afriyie stool.
  • She was raised in the Ghana until the age of 15 and has been in Maryland for the past 11 years.
  • Nancy attended Hammond High School in Columbia, Md., and went to college at Mount St. Mary’s University in Emmetsburg where she obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in Biochemistry/Chemistry.
  • She is married to Kwabena Yamoah and her husband is also studying Medicine at Johns Hopkins. They got married in 2016.
  • She will be the first physician in her immediate and extended family.
  • Nancy will continue her medical training in a three to seven-year residency program while at the hospital.

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