He graduated from the University of Ghana Medical School in 1992. He worked for the Ghana Ministry of Health as District Director of Health Services for several years and proceeded to do his postdoctoral studies at Yale, USA. In 2006, Dr. Paintsil and his colleagues established the Yale-Ghana Partnership for Global Health with the mission of accelerating progress in Infectious Diseases and Public Health research in Africa through collaborative partnerships that effectively build intrinsic research capacity and reverse “brain-drain” by strengthening academic infrastructures.