Dr. Lydya Yonael Teklu

About Me:

Dr. Lydya Yonael Teklu is a Consultant Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeon with over a decade of clinical, academic, and leadership experience in surgical care across East Africa. She holds a Doctor of Medicine degree from Hawassa University and completed her specialty training in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at Addis Ababa University. She is a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons (FACS) and a Fellow of the College of Surgeons of East, Central and Southern Africa (FCS-ECSA), having earned her COSECSA fellowship in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery in 2019.

Dr. Teklu's clinical expertise spans the full breadth of reconstructive surgery, including acute and secondary burn management, complex trauma, tumor resection and reconstruction, hand and peripheral nerve surgery, vascular injury, and congenital malformations. She has served as a senior Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeon at ALERT Hospital in Addis Ababa and at Hawassa University Comprehensive Specialized Hospital, where her responsibilities included preoperative planning, performing complex Plastic and reconstructive cases, and postoperative care for patients with deformities of infectious, neoplastic, traumatic, and congenital origin.

Alongside her clinical work, Dr. Teklu has been deeply invested in surgical education and workforce development. She has held academic appointments as an Assistant Professor and Lecturer at Hawassa University College of Medicine and Health Sciences and Debre Berhan University, where she coordinated surgical skills laboratories, delivered lectures and problem-based learning sessions, and mentored residents in General Surgery, Maxillofacial Surgery, Orthopedic Surgery and Plastic Surgery. She has also served as a Focal Person with Project Harar (UK), supporting facial reconstruction outreach program, and has trained regional COSECSA plastic and orthopedic surgery residents through reconstructive surgery workshops in Tanzania.

Dr. Teklu is an active researcher with peer-reviewed contributions to the international COVIDSurg/GlobalSurg Collaborative studies on perioperative outcomes, and she is co-author of a retrospective study on primary cutaneous malignancies in Ethiopia, published in Plastics and Reconstructive Surgery, Global Open (2026). She is a member of the American College of Surgeons, the Ethiopian Medical Association, the Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery Society of Ethiopia, and the College of Surgeons of East, Central and Southern Africa.