Lewis Wall, MD, DPhil, M.Bioeth graduated from the University of Kansas and studied social anthropology at The Institute of Social Anthropology and The Queen’s College, Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He carried out anthropological field research among the Hausa people of northern Nigeria as a Social Science Research Council Doctoral Dissertation Fellow and a Fulbright-Hayes Fellow. He received his doctoral degree in social anthropology from Oxford University. A graduate of the University of Kansas School of Medicine, he did his residency training in obstetrics and gynecology at Duke University Medical Center. His book, Hausa Medicine:  Illness and Well-being in a West African Culture, was published by Duke University Press in 1988. Dr. Wall did fellowships in female urology and urodynamics at The University of London (St. George’s Hospital) and St. Mary’s Hospital for Women and Children in Manchester, England. He is a board-certified obstetrician gynecologist with sub-specialty certification in female pelvic medicine and reconstructive surgery. He also has a master’s degree in bioethics from the Center for Human Bioethics at Monash University in Australia and served as chair of the Barnes-Jewish Hospital Ethics Committee in St. Louis.

Dr. Wall has a longstanding interest in the health problems of women in Africa, where he has worked for nearly 50 years. He founded The Worldwide Fistula Fund in 1995, a not-for-profit public charity in the United States dedicated to providing care for women who have developed obstetric fistulas from prolonged obstructed labor. Dr. Wall’s book, Tears for My Sisters:  The Tragedy of Obstetric Fistula, was published by the Johns Hopkins University Press in 2018.

Dr. Wall served as a Fulbright Scholar in the Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology at Ayder Comprehensive Specialized Hospital in Mekelle, Ethiopia, in 2014, where he completed a research project on obstetric fistulas, helped coordinate other research projects, and taught courses on medical ethics.  

Dr. Wall is Adjunct Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology in the College of Health Sciences at Mekelle University.  In October, 2014, he was awarded the University Gold Medal by Mekelle University for meritorious contributions to medical education. He was named the first holder of the Selina Okin Kim Conner Professorship in Arts and Sciences for Medical Anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis in 2015. He retired from Washington University in 2021 but he is still active in writing, research, and humanitarian service in several African countries, including service on the Board of Governors of the Terrewode Women’s Community Hospital in Soroti, a dedicated fistula-care center in northeastern Uganda.