Frank Plani MD, FCS, FRACS

Frank Plani is the Head of the Trauma Directorate of the Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital and the Co-Chair of the Academic Division of Trauma Surgery at the University of the Witwatersrand.
He was born in Trieste, Italy, in 1954, where he obtained his medical degree from the University of Trieste in 1980. He then worked in Zimbabwe on an Italian cooperation program until 1984, and then he moved to Johannesburg, South Africa to train in General Surgery. He obtained his fellowship in 1992. After working briefly at the Helen Joseph Hospital as a general surgeon, he was employed at the Trauma Unit of the Johannesburg Hospital from 1993 to 2006 as a Senior Specialist as well as a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Surgery of the University of the Witwatersrand.
He joined the South African Reserve Police Service in 1996, becoming the Head of the Medical Unit at the Johannesburg Police Emergency Services with the rank of Superintendent, until the end of 2006, when he moved to Australia. He was the Chair of Trauma Surgery at the National Critical Care and Trauma Response Centre, Royal Darwin Hospital, Northern Territory, Australia, and Professor at Flinders University Northern Territory Clinical School from 2007 to the middle of 2009, when he returned to South Africa to be Principal Specialist and Deputy Head of the Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital Trauma Directorate and a Senior Lecturer in the University of the Witwatersrand. In 2013 he was promoted to Adjunct Professor. He is in charge of disaster management in the Division of Surgery. He has worked as a missionary surgeon for the International Committee of the Red Cross in North West Pakistan.
His main interests are surgical education, disaster management, new technologies for trauma surgery, and surgical critical care.