Larry Onyango Akoko is Associate Professor of Surgery of Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Prof. Akoko graduated from medical school as a medical doctor from the then Muhimbili University College in 2004. He worked in a district level hospital, young and unprepared for the job saved patients doing emergency surgery, most of which were Caesarean section. This motivated him to join Surgical residency program at Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences where he graduated as a general surgeon in 2010. After two years in general surgery, he spent three years serving in paediatric surgery, one of the most underserved specialties in the country. Prof. Akoko has a longstanding interest in surgical oncology demonstrated by his fellowship training in surgical oncology majoring in gastrointestinal tract cancer from Tata Memorial Hospital under Merck Foundation scholarship in Mumbai, India in 2020. He also trained in esophageal cancer surgery from Linxian Esophageal Cancer Institute in China in 2018.
Prof. Akoko brings 14 years of surgical practice during which he served the Tanzania surgical association ascending all senior posts to become its president in 2021-23. During his tenure in TSA, he was actively involved in developing the countries first NSOAP which would later go on to become the reference NSOAP for many countries. Following the NSOAP launch, he was appointed to serve in the National NSOAP steering committee in the health ministry, a role he serves to date. His current focus is to strengthen surgical care at lower-level facilities by bringing in stakeholders from various fields and organising surgical outreach activities. His dream is to be able to start the first Tanzania led global surgery platform.