Beginnings of Neurosurgery at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria.

Introduction Available data concerning various neurologic disease entities occurring in West African are still appalling scanty, such that a vigorous effort seems urgently essential in the next few years to rectify this lag. In various parts of Nigeria, like much elsewhere in Africa, much neurologic problems presently remain inadvertently neglected for the more pressing consideration of the common tropical diseases and general surgical emergencies. It can be safely presumed that every day there are innumerable illnesses of the nervous system, unrecognized and untreated, that go down in these parts with many a patient, hidden in the remote villages or lost forever irretrievably into the many unmarked graves.