Tertius Venter

Tertius HJ Venter Plastic and reconstructive surgeon born and trained in South Africa and was in a private surgical practice in South Africa for several years.

He gave up his private surgical practice in early 2006 and is currently spending i) approximately 6-7 months of the year in Africa with Mercy Ships, a hospital ship delivering free surgeries to the poorest of the poor (www.mercyships.org), also with PAACS (www.paacs.net) in East Africa, mainly Ethiopia. The Pan African Academy of Christian Surgeons (PAACS) is an American based organization that trains surgeons in Africa for Africa. And with Operation Smile (www.operationsmile.org) repairing cleft lip and palate deformities on people to whom these surgeries are not available. ii) A further three months of the year is spent in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, writing and doing fundraising for his work iii) From 2002 to 2012 he worked in Ireland for 2-3 months per year doing cosmetic surgery to fund his activities. He resigned from this position in April 2012 to serve as a full time volunteer.

He regularly gives talks at national and international universities, youth groups, schools, congresses, churches, Rotary meetings, and have been interviewed and been on national, international, secular and religious television and radio about his work and about answering and reacting to the call on his life. He has spoken in several countries in Africa, spoken in several states of the United States, United Kingdom, Ireland, The Netherlands and India.

He was a co-author and has written several chapters of the PAACS textbook 'Principles of Reconstructive Surgery in Africa'

In 2009 a documentary was produced about his work and the work of Mercy Ships. 'The Dawn of a New Day' has won several national and international awards.