Dr. Walter Vermeulen is a Belgian-born physician who obtained his medical degree from the Free University of Brussels, Belgium in 1964. He immigrated to the United States and completed a mixed surgical internship followed by a four-year surgical residency program at the Queen’s Medical Center, Honolulu, Hawaii. Invited by the government of Western Samoa in 1969, he became the surgeon specialist of the Samoan Health Department. He has been a naturalized Samoan citizen since 1975.