UCH offers open heart surgery to 17-month-old boy, 9 others

AGAINST the backdrop of its mandate on research, training and services, the University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan in collaboration with Healing Little Hearts, a UK-based charity that provides free heart surgeries for babies and children, performed open-heart surgery on a 17-month-old boy on Monday with a plan to have another nine other cases done by tomorrow.

The 17-month-old boy, the second child of his parents based in Abuja, was diagnosed at birth to have Tetralogy of Fallot, one of the most common congenital heart disorders (CHDs). The birth defect affects normal blood flow out of the heart and into the rest of the body.

The baby’s father, a civil servant in Abuja, could not  afford the cost of the surgery outside Nigeria because its surgical operation in India and USA were estimated at N12 million and N20 million respectively. This is aside from other costs like travel and hotel bills. The open heart surgery, which was heavily subsided, cost N3 million.

UCH’s head of cardiovascular team, Professor Samuel Omokhodion said the open heart surgeries, with the support of Healing Little hearts, are expected to be a continuous exercise to ensure skills transfer, knowledge transfer and offer repair of heart defects in children.

According to him, “It is not that the skills on the ground had no training at all; there is a learning curve. It is to reinforce the skills of our young cardiologists so that they become increasingly proficient in what they do to the point that starts from the not so complex cases, they can develop into handling much more complex cases.”

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Professor Omokhodion said open heart surgery is capital intensive and urged public support for the hospital in its effort to repair heart defects and give affected children a new lease of life.

He added, “we need public support, the facilities for open-heart surgery are in UCH, Ibadan now so that we can mount these exercises and help these children who otherwise will not even have the opportunity to travel abroad to have heart repair surgeries.

“We are doing this with the hope that they can get a new lease of life and have their future destiny restored to them. We hope to restore to them a normal life expectancy and opportunity of pursuing their goals in life and contributing to Nigeria.”