PATRICK ABANG, Calabar –
Ikpeme Ikpeme, a Professor of Orthopaedics and Chief Medical Director of the University of Calabar Teaching Hospital (UCTH) on Thursday said the hospital has carried out the first heart surgery in the entire South South Nigeria.
The Chief Medical Director in a statement made available to newsman in Calabar said “Today, Wednesday 15th September, 2021, at 6.43pm, history was made in our UCTH, when the first ever open heart surgery was performed in our hospital .
Prof. Ikpeme noted that the patient was safely wheeled out to the Intensive Care Unit, adding that: “She had recieved a Mitral valve replacement following about Six & a half hours of Surgery. This has been the culmination of 2 years of hardwork, determination, sacrifice, vision and focus at different levels of our hospital”
The statement further said: “The MOU for Open Heart Surgery Missions was signed with the VOOM Foundation sometime in 2015/16. Things went quiet until the MOU was reviewed with the Foundation in July/August 2019 and UCTH made a commitment to actualize the programme & domesticate open heart surgery in our hospital. After 2 years of sacrificial hardwork, doggedness, critical planning and determination against many odds”.
“Here we are today. We have had to construct a new theatre suite using in-house engineering and technical teams, we had to create a multidisciplinary Heart Surgery Team; we had to clear 2Nos 40ft containers from Onne Port, Port Harcourt & invest in equipment worth millions of Naira (Heart-Lung machine, Heater-Cooler iinterexchangersystem, Cell savers, High end Anaesthetic Machine, high end monitors, Defibrillator with Internal pads, Ventilators, digital mobile xray system, etc). Hours of work went into this project. Professional fathers like Prof We are the first Tertiary Health Institution in South-South Nigeria to accomplish this, & join a group of very few elite centres nationwide. And at this early stage, we are offering these surgeries at 30% of their actual cost. This programme therefore does not belong to any individual or Administration, it belongs to UCTH and can only be sustained when we choose to be a TEAM”.
“Our commitment is that as we resuscitate basic services, we will strive to introduce higher end services that will define our existence as a Tertiary centre & contribute to the well-being of our people and community”
“As resources permit, we will continue to work with Departments & Units that demonstrate a hunger for growth”
“We may not have always gotten it right, sometimes we have faltered, but we are determined to stay the course, under God, and work to develop this UCTH, our UCTH”.
“2021 has been a difficult year for us. Like most other institutions, communities & even nations, UCTH has struggled & remains afloat only by the grace & mercy of God and the dogged determination of her patriotic staff. Today’s feat must therefore be seen as just reward for your labours of love & patriotism to our hospital and nation. We salute you”.
On behalf of Management, I wish to express sincere gratitude to everyone who made this happen. We owe a debt of gratitude to the Honourable Minister of Health and the Federal Ministry of Health who granted approval with insistence on skills transfer. Our surgeons led this effort actively & some team members came from across the country. We thank the Board Chairman (we couldn’t ask for any better Chairman) and the Governing Board for giving us the “wing to fly”, the statement noted.
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