Date: 2017-08-31

The Chief Medical Director (CMD) of University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital (UITH), Professor Abdulwaheed Olatinwo said the UITH would before the end of this year make available a catlab towards boosting the open-heart surgery efforts the hospital.

But Olatinwo identified incessant strike actions of some of the health workers of the hospital as antithetical to growth and a hindrance to effective healthcare delivery in Nigeria, noting that strike action has become an obsolete style resolving industrial disharmony in the health sector of any nation the world over.

The UITH boss spoke yesterday in Ilorin the Kwara state capital when three patients of the hospital were discharged after open-heart surgeries, involving corrections of malfunctioning valves and their replacement. The development was the third of its kind under the leadership of the CMD. Besides; he was the pioneering hospital boss of the UITH to have commenced the complex operations.

The operations were conducted by a team of surgeons from India with the supports of some Cardio Thoracic surgeons of the UITH. Although the cost of any of the operations was put at a sum of N7 million the hospital merely collected a sum of one million from each of the patients.

He said, "As workers of health sector, we need to look beyond the issue of money while discharging our duties to the patients. In India for instance, where majority of the human population are neither Muslim nor Christian they have better passion for the job than many of our colleagues here in Nigeria.

"We could have done these procedures some months ago but for the recurring strikes of some category of our doctors. We should know that God is watching us and He is the best rewarder of the diligent ones. What is amazing in these Indians is the fact that they left for their country on Friday and resumed work the next day, which was on Saturday. If it had happened to us here do you think we would have resumed duties when they did? "

Olatinwo, who disclosed how an Indian doctor had told him of his capacity to carry out 40 complexes corrective operations of the heart in a day, urged the UITH staff to emulate the kind gestures towards making the hospital a model for its contemporaries.

He added, "Open heart surgeries have come to stay in this hospital. Catlab will be ready very soon. We should not just imbibe the skills of the Indian doctors but we should also emulate their commitments to their paid duties. Despite all these, UITH is still a leading hospital in the Open Heart Surgeries in Nigeria due to the mortality rate of one in every 10 procedures."

While congratulating the parents of the patients for the successes of the surgeries, the hospital boss, thanked the task force consisting of best hands in all the relevant fields as constituted by the hospital's management for doing a good job, working as a team to achieve the feats.

In his remarks, the leader of the task force Professor Timothy Adedoyin said the ventricular defects of the hearts among others were corrected without any mortality just as he lauded the Olatinwo led management for subsidizing the costs of the operations in order to save the lives of the patients.

For Adedoyin, teamwork among the surgeons, anesthetists, pharmacists, nurses, and radiologists brought out the best option for the procedures just as he recommended the same method for other procedures in the nation's hospitals.

Speaking on behalf of the other parents of the patients, Krumale said but for the assistance of the UITH, none of the parents who are all civil servants would have been able to afford the costs of the surgeries, especially by travelling abroad for same.

The overtly elated Krumale expressed more confidence in the skills of Nigerian surgeons saving lives of Nigerians but with a caveat that "if needed facilities are provided. "

One of the patients, Matthew like other two was seen exhibiting better and more promising energies with a declaration by Olatinwo that, "these ones are now fit as a fiddle to compete with any of their colleagues in any form of strenuous activities. "