The Edward Francis Small Teaching Hospital (EFSTH) was once synonymous with incompetence and unnecessary deaths of patients but the arrival of Dr Kebba Marenah, a UK-trained doctor is fast turning the once dilapidated and poorly run teaching hospital into a centre of excellence. 

Gambians used to run to Senegal or India for complicated surgeries but for the first time in the history of the country, Gambians are staying right at home to do hip and knee replacements thanks to the expertise of Dr Marenah who has been leading the surgeries with his team of trained medical doctors from the University of The Gambia (UTG). 

Writing on her Facebook, Margaret Forster, a celebrity fitness guru who recently had surgery at the EFSTH said: “Alhamdulillahi rabbil alamin. Thank you all for your prayers, kind words, phone calls and messages of good wishes. Allah has accepted your prayers and guided Dr Marenah and his team throughout my surgery”. 

Another commentator who spoke to What's On-Gambia said: “People used to ditch the EFSTH for private clinics like Africmed, Medicare among many others but now they are ditching private hospitals for the EFSTH because of the new standards and improvements in healthcare delivery." 

A US-based Gambian also revealed: “My mum got sick and because I was in America, I wanted to send her to a private clinic but I was told not to bother because it is the same doctors at the EFSTH that work in private hospitals part-time.” 

Dr Marenah was born and raised in The Gambia and attended Marina International School before heading to Imperial College to bag his degree in medicine and surgery. 

He worked in several Level One Trauma Centers in British hospitals before returning home in 2018 to serve as a consultant surgeon in trauma and orthopaedics.