The bariatric center at Min-Sheng General Hospital is a leading
center for weight loss and metabolic surgery in Taiwan. Professor Lee Wei-Jei
and his team have performed more than 5,000 such surgeries, and offer a full
range of the latest procedures. The Center’s reputation outside of Taiwan is
now such that patients from abroad who want to undergo surgery travel to
Min-Sheng. The Center also attracts foreign specialists keen to learn the
latest techniques with Prof Lee, and doctors from Japan, Korea, the USA,
Indonesia and Mongolia have come to observe Professor Lee and his team. To meet
the demand for longer training courses, the Center decided to offer a choice of
fellowships ranging from mini-fellowships lasting from one to six months, to
one-year full clinical fellowships. After their credentials were reviewed by
the Taiwan DOH, the first fellows Singapore and Malaysia were enrolled in the
program in early 2013. At the end of 2013, Dr. Abdullah Almulaifi from Kuwait
became the first international doctor to be enrolled in our full clinical
fellowship program.
Before applying at Min-Sheng, Dr. Almulaifi had extensively researched
fellowship programs across the world. He had enquired at, and visited
institutions that also propose such fellowships in France, the UK, the USA, and
Korea. He visited the Bariatric Center at Min-Sheng for one week in July 2013,
and after meeting with Professor Lee,
the program director, and the other people involved with the program, he
decided to apply for a one year clinical fellowship in Bariatric and Metabolic Surgery,
and Advanced Laparoscopic Surgery. He chose to come to Taiwan because he
thought that Min-Sheng’s program was the only one that could offer him a
comprehensive hands-on training in the field of bariatric
and metabolic surgery. He was very impressed by the number and variety of
surgeries performed at the Center, and by the level of scientific research the
center is involved with.
Dr. Almulaifi has been an outstanding fellow who dedicated a lot of
time to improve his skills and learn new techniques. In a region where surgeons
only perform one type of weight loss surgery (sleeve gastrectony), Dr.
Almulaifi will now stand out as the only doctor experienced in all techniques of
bariatric and metabolic surgery and able to tackle even the most complicated
cases. Dr. Almulaifi also contributed to many scientific papers published in
International Journals and presented the results of the team’s research at
international conferences. Among his most significant achievements are a paper
that he co-wrote with Professor Lee that was published in the prestigious SOARD
Journal, the official journal of the American Society for Metabolic and
Bariatric Surgery, and a keynote address at the 2014 IFSO Conference in
Montreal, Canada, for a paper that was chosen out of 900 papers.
