The don said the attention given to cardiac surgery in South Africa is not comparable with what same surgery receives in Nigeria
By Dele Moses, Ilorin
A cardiac surgeon, Prof. Peter Adeoye, has called on the government and members of the public for improved funding of cardiac surgery to save numerous people in the country suffering from cardiac ailment that requires the surgery to heal.
He said the number of open heart surgeries the country performs is too low compared to “significant incidence of patients with cardiac conditions needing intervention.”
Adeoye who is a don at the department of surgery, college of health science of University of Ilorin made the call in the inaugural lecture he delivered at the University.
The lecture, which is the 216th edition of the university is entitled : “Battling to Keep Our Hearts: Who will Heal the Bleeding Heart?”
The don said Nigeria is on the abysmally low stand on the table of investments in cardiac surgeries by countries of the world.
He said that the level of attention giving the surgery in South Africa makes it worrisome the attention the surgery receives in Nigeria.
He stated: “During my training on South Africa, precisely on the 1st of October, 2003, I was grouped into donor-heart haven’t team that flew 2 hours from Cape Town on Western Cape to Mthatha in Eastern Cape to retrieve a heart used in transplanting the heart of a patient with end-state cardiac failure, also flown 2 hours from Johannesburg in Gauteng Prince of Cape Town. The Excellently coordinated adventure happened on my dear country’s Independent Day and it made my heart bleed.
” I was part of several heart transplantation procedures thereafter the question that kept running through my mind which remains pertinent even now was “when will my country achieve this level of advancement?”
The surgeon urged the government, private sector and philanthropic organisations to give greater attention to funding of cardiac surgery in the country so that more patients than the number being attended to could be operated upon.
He said there should be infrastructural and facility development that include dedicated theaters, Intensive Care Units and Cardiac Catheterizations Laboratory.
The don also called for manpower development and team building saying thoracic and cardiovascular surgeons, cardiac perioperative and ward care nurses, intensive and intensive care nurses, cardiac anaesthesiologist, Cardiovascular perfusionist, chest/cardiac physiotherapist must be groomed and maintained as a team.