KidsOR Gives Succour To Children With Health Issues
A Scottish charity, Kids Operating Room (KidsOR), has provided facilities at the National Hospital, Abuja (NHA), to boost successful operation on children with serious health conditions.
Mrs Oyejide Adedoyin, the Chief Nursing Officer and Matron of KidsOR at the hospital, said in Abuja on Wednesday that the effort was to ameliorate risky long wait to attend to children’s emergency and surgery cases.
She said that KidsOR, a charity registered in Scotland, facilitated the installation of two dedicated paediatric operating rooms at the NHA, which assisted the operation of 1,348 paediatric cases in three years.
She said that “in 2021, we operated on 494 children, 608 in 2022 and as at June 2023, more than 246 children had undergone surgeries in the hospital.”
According to her, KidsOR started equipping dedicated paediatric theatres and training of paediatric surgeons at the National Hospital in 2019.
She explained that the programme is part of initiative to provide more than 50 paediatric operating rooms annually in the next five years.
“Presently, Kids Operating Room theatres has already created capacity for 100,000 life-changing paediatric operations,” the matron said.
Adedoyin recalled that at the start of KidsOR intervention in 2019, the unit was short-staffed, especially of theatre nurses and anaesthetists.
“However, to meet the expectated high number of cases that comes with a dedicated theatre of KidsOR, we started pulling out nurses from the main operating theatres of the hospital.
“We also work late into the night to cope with volume of work with the little number of nurses and anaesthetists.’’
She said that the fully-equipped Kids operating Room, carved out as an independent unit, was able to secure seven additional theatre nurses, “but we are still in need of more nurses and anaesthetists.
“It has been good having KidsOR to equip and supply materials to work for the Operating Room created exclusively to save kids and stop delays in attending to their peculiar needs, especially surgeries.”
Founded in 2018, KidsOR charity is a global health NGO that focuses on safe surgery to children.
The group installs paediatric operating rooms in low and middle income countries with the aim of bringing access to safe surgery to every child who needs it.
NAN/Oyenike Oyeniyi
