A medical expert, Dr. Rufus Ojewola, has stated that Nigeria has made remarkable progress in the field of surgery over the past 50 years.
Ojewola made the remark on Thursday in Lagos while speaking on the sidelines of the Nigeria Surgical Congress, tagged “Eko Akete 2025.”
The Newsman reports that the theme of the congress was “Innovative and Sustainable Financing for Surgical Care,” with a sub-theme: “Advances in Surgery: The Nigerian Situation.”
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Ojewola, who was the Congress President and Chairman, Local Organising Committee, said that though Nigeria might not have been at par with other countries of the world in surgery, it had, nevertheless, made tremendous improvement in the last 50 years.
“In Nigeria, yes we are not at par with other countries of the world but we have made tremendous improvement in the last 50 years.
“For example, in the past, every operation that took place in this country had to be by open surgery.
“But in every sub-specialties now, we have laparoscopic and endoscopic surgery taking place in many of our teaching hospitals and even private hospitals in Nigeria,” he said.
Ojewola, a urological surgeon, said that about 10 years ago, if a patient had kidney stone and he/she wanted to remove it without going under the knife, the person had to go abroad.
He, however, said that there were many Centres now in the country where kidney stones could be removed through minimally-invasive laser procedures by urologists.
According to him, Nigerians have no reason to go abroad because of kidney stone disease and other endo-urological procedures, as lots of development had taken place in the country’s health sector.
“Recently, we had the first robotic surgery performed in Nigeria for the very first time.
“This was a big development which I personally did not think that it would be this early and that there would be robotic Centres that would be established in the next one year in Nigeria,” he said.
Ojewola, however, said that that there were still some areas where there could be collaboration with medical experts from other parts of the world, especially in terms of training and retraining.
In his remarks, the President of American College of Surgeons, Nigeria chapter, Prof Samuel Ademola, said that the conference was organised in conjunction with Association of Surgeons of Nigeria (ASON).
He said that the conference was aimed at bringing quality healthcare to Nigeria and ensuring that there was high quality surgical education and safe surgery for everyone.
He, however, said that this could not be achieved without enough funding for the personnel, infrastructure and education.
“We found out that the funding from government, particularly at this time, cannot be adequate for what we envisaged and for the vision that we had.
“That’s why we put this conference together to talk about funding for surgical education,” he said.
According to him, surgeons are doing a lot to interact and collaborate with Health Maintenance Organisation (HMO) to understand the need for surgery, noting that lots of them are now incorporating surgery into what they cover.
Also speaking, the President of ASON, Dr Oluwole Olaomi, said that the cost of living in Nigeria and all over the world had become very high.
Olaomi noted that even before now, majority of Nigerians could not afford the cost of medical care, adding that this had been further compounded by the rate at which medical doctors were travelling abroad for greener pastures.
“Many people are on the surgery waiting list, not because the personnel were not available but because they themselves decided to postpone their surgery because they are looking for money.
“We need to come together as surgeons in Nigeria to see how we can finance the health costs and how we can take the burden off the people.
“We must jointly do something about the cost of surgery and make it more accessible,” he added.