Ned Abraham

Ned Abraham (born Nedeem Ibrahim on November 11, 1961) is an Associate Professor of surgery at the Faculty of Medicine, University of New South Wales a general & colorectal surgeon, a clinical academic and a retired Australian Army Reserve Officer. He has spoken at multiple national and international meetings in four continents and his published articles in general, colorectal and academic surgery have been cited in the medical literature over a thousand times. He continues to practice and teach surgery in Coffs Harbour, NSW, Australia.
Early life.
Abraham was born Nedeem Ibrahim in Alexandria, Egypt on 11 November 1961, in a conservative family of four sons. Nasar's Egypt at the time was between its second and third wars with Israel. Ned lived through The Six-Day War in June 1967 when he was five and The Yom Kippur War in October 1973 when he was eleven which probably caused Ned to develop an early passion for helping humanity and an intense desire to become a surgeon since he was eleven. He excelled in his school years and was seventeen when he was accepted into the Alexandria Faculty of Medicine, University of Alexandria in Egypt in 1979.
Education, qualifications and career.
For financial reasons, Abraham had a number of failed attempts to attend university in the United Kingdom and the United States. He returned to Alexandria and completed the requirements for the degree of a Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery with Honors at The Faculty of Medicine, University of Alexandria, which he obtained in 1985. He served for one year with the mine disposal team of the Egyptian Army in 1986 disposing of World War II mines in the El Alamein region before leaving for the United Kingdom and then the United States for a period of time. He moved to Australia in mid-1989 but spent around a year in New Zealand before returning to Australia. He commenced work as an intern and then a resident medical officer at North West Regional Hospital in Burnie and Latrobe Base Hospital (now called Mersey Community Hospital) in Tasmania in 1992.
At the end of 1993 Abraham moved to work at the Royal Darwin Hospital in the Northern Territory, before moving to work at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in New South Wales in January 1995 where he stayed for the next eleven years. In that time, he completed and obtained the degree of a Master of Medicine (MM) in Clinical Epidemiology from the Faculty of Medicine, University of Sydney in 1998 before commencing his training in general surgery.
He succeeded in entering the General Surgical Training Program at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in 2008 and became the first non-specialist overseas trained doctor from a non-English speaking country to be accepted in the general surgical training program at that hospital in its recent history.
In 1995, a year before his first son David Marcus was born, he enlisted in the Australian Army Reserve. He was posted on deployments as a ranked officer and as a civilian in Bougainville, Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea. His second son Daniel Jonathan was born in 1998.
By coincidence and in 2003, he became the first man in history to be awarded a surgical fellowship by a woman, Mrs Anne Kolbe, who was the first female president of a college of surgeons anywhere in the world. After obtaining the Fellowship of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, he qualified for the Membership of the Colorectal Surgical Society of Australia and New Zealand.
On the completion of his surgical training in Australia, he was awarded the Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons of England by an invitation from its Vice President in 2003. He worked as the Surgical Superintendent of the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital for three years before moving to Coffs Harbour, New South Wales, where he took up a job as a Senior Lecturer in Surgery at the Faculty of Medicine, University of New South Wales, as well as public and private hospital appointments as a colorectal and general surgeon. In mid 2020, he retired from the public hospital after 16 years of service but continues his work at the private hospital.
He completed and obtained the degree of a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Surgery from the University of Sydney in 2008. In 2009, he became the first clinical academic to be promoted to the level of an Associate Professor in the eleven-year history of the Rural Medical School, UNSW Australia.
Publications and research.
Abraham has published more than forty articles and abstracts and given more than thirty presentations at national and international meetings in Australia, New Zealand, China, Singapore, Croatia, Italy, Thailand and the United States. His published work has been cited in the medical literature more than a thousand times. He designed, conducted and published three systematic reviews, two case control studies, a surgical randomised controlled clinical trial, a prospective clinical trial and a cohort study.
He conducted and wrote the first published systematic review of reasons for non-entry of eligible patients into surgical randomised trials, the first published prospective study of reasons for non-entry of eligible patients into a surgical randomised trial, the first surgical randomised control trial to have ever been conducted at the Royal Darwin Hospital, the first published prospective comparative study of myocardial injuries following repair of aortic aneurysms before any randomised trials were conducted on the issue, the first published meta-analysis of non-randomised comparative studies of a surgical procedure, the first published direct comparison between a randomised trial and a historical control study of a surgical procedure, the first published meta-analysis of the short term outcomes after laparoscopic resection for colon cancer and the first published direct comparison between a meta-analysis of randomised and non-randomised studies of a surgical procedure.
He was interviewed by ABC Radio NSW and 2CS Radio three times, the Sydney Morning Herald, The Financial Review and by National Channel 7 News about ten times promoting local and national health issues between 2007 and 2013 and his correspondence was tabled in the NSW Parliament in May 2008
Awards.
He was granted the Award of Best Papers presented at Surgical Grand Rounds by the Division of Surgery at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in 1997, The Trevor Taylor Prize of the Staff Specialist Committee & Management Board, Royal Darwin Hospital twice, in 1994 and in 1995 and The Patron's Prize by the Medical Board of Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in 1995.
Personal life.
Assoc Professor Ned Abraham has two sons: David Marcus (born 1996) and Daniel Jonathan (born 1998).