Moroccan Neurosurgery: Current Situation and Its Contribution to Global Neurosurgery

Abstract

The first neurosurgical departments were created in the country in 1960, one in Rabat and Casa Blanca. Non-Moroccan neurosurgeons chaired these departments, and between 1960 and 1975, four local neurosurgeons would take over. After The first Medical school in Morocco opened in Rabat in 1962, a training program in neurosurgery was set up in 1968. The first trained Moroccan neurosurgeons were very active. They encouraged the development of local training in Morocco with additional training in foreign countries to increase the number of neurosurgeons and support the organization and promote neurosurgery in the country. They also convinced health policymakers to include neurosurgery in the Moroccan health care system as a priority with an upgrade of the specialty first in all university hospitals and then in all regional hospitals according to the needs.  By supporting local training, Morocco ended up in 1998 with eighty native neurosurgeons while there were none in 1956. With nine neurosurgical departments, four of these were inside University Hospitals and with a National Society of Neurosurgery, created in 1984 (1). Other medical and surgical specialties also developed simultaneously as neurosurgery and ended up with a training program. Since then, the evolution of Moroccan  Neurosurgery has been continuous, rapid, and outstanding, and many advances have been achieved in the last two decades (1). Two significant events marked the evolution of Moroccan Neurosurgery in these previous two decades:

1. The organization of the 13th world congress in Marrakech in 2005, “Bridging the Gap in Neurosurgery,” considered as the first international gathering of Neurosurgeons, draws the Global Neurosurgery concept and take the attention of the international neurosurgical community in the huge gap between HICs and LMICs regarding a number of neurosurgeons and neurosurgical practice mainly in Africa (2).
2. The decision of the WFNS to leadership the creation of the first WFNS Reference center in Rabat to train young African Neurosurgeons from sub-Saharan Africa, which had a positive impact on the evolution of neurosurgery in Morocco but also in all continent (3).