The Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital (ABUTH) is set to conduct its first open heart surgery by the end of September, the Chief Medical Director has said.
Prof. Lawal Khalid, who addressed reporters in Zaria yesterday, said the operation was the culmination of years of careful planning and upgrade of hospitalโs capacity.
According to him, ABUTH was conducting the operation in collaboration with the University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital (UNTH), which is a national centre for open heart surgery in the country, and a University in Ghana.
He said the hospital has set up a cardiothoracic centre with state of the art facility to carry out the surgery, saying it will be the first time an open heart surgery would be conducted in the north.
Khalid noted that as a centre of excellence for Oncology treatment, ABUTH is at the verge of establishing a linear treatment centre for advanced radiation treatment of cancer patients.
He said the hospital receives between 1,500 and 1,800 new cancer cases yearly โand we are committed to giving our patients the best possible treatment availableโ to mitigate their pains where we cannot cure them.
The CMD, however, lamented that the hospital lacked basic diagnostic equipment like CT scan machine, poor funding for overhead costs and other challenges.
