Barbara Jemec

Barbara Jemec

Barbara Jemec is the founding Chairman of BFIRST. She originally comes from Denmark, where she graduated from Copenhagen University in 1991, after which she relocated to train in the UK, where she became a consultant in the NHS for 17 years in central London teaching hospitals, before she took her Canadian Boards and relocated to Toronto. 

Her current job at the Toronto Western Hospital in Plastic Surgery has an official Global Surgery component. She has been elected to many national surgical associations’ councils, and managed to advance their active involvement and organisation of Global Surgery successfully.

She is committed to the training and development of sustainable projects in areas with poorer access to timely and relevant surgery, and has since she became a consultant in 2004, been visiting and working in Ghana, Mali, Bolivia and Bangladesh and the British Society for Surgery of the Hand project in Sierra Leone to help local Surgeons expand their repertoire of reconstructive procedures and improve patient care.

“We have a long way to go; but by identifying with our colleagues and patients in resource poor areas, we will achieve a better understanding of how to most efficiently help to make access to surgery equitable.”