Press Releases

Fashola Restates Resolve To Reduce Foreign Trips For Treatment Of Heart Related Diseases

Feb 3, 2009 - Lagos State Governor, Mr. Babatunde Fashola (SAN) on Tuesday restated his administration’s commitment to stemming the tide of foreign trips by Lagosians to seek medical treatment for heart-related and other congenital diseases.

Governor Fashola, who fielded questions from newsmen after a get well visit to beneficiaries of open heart surgeries conducted by the Global Eagle Foundation, a medical mission from the United States of America at the Critical Care Unit of the Lagos State University Hospital (LASUTH) in Ikeja, asserted that all the programmes being put in place by the State Government in the last four years were geared towards achieving that set goal.

Such programmes, Governor Fashola said, include the building of a full-fledged Renal and Cardiac centres in its General Hospital annex in Gbagada, the massive advocacy by the State Government in the last twenty years as well as the capacity building and training for local doctors and nurses and all technical people in the specialized medical field through the direct intervention of the medical mission which has worked in collaboration with the State Government in the last four years.

According to the Governor: “I do not expect to see an increase in the cases of patients with heart diseases considering all that we have been doing in the last four years as well as the massive advocacy that the state government has embarked upon in the last twenty years”.

On the impact of the medical mission led by Dr. Jonathan Nwiloh, Governor Fashola declared: “Not only have they helped us to build local capacity for Lagosians and Nigerians, the mission has been very impactful on those who have benefitted from it. People who ordinarily would not have been able to afford the surgery have benefitted and recovered from it”.

He said the State Government, in addition to building a fully fledge Renal and Cardiac centres that would also deal with all of such other issues as High blood pressure and Hypertension in its General Hospital annex in Gbagada, has also embarked on programmes to inform the people about life changes that are necessary so that they are not predisposed to such diseases.

Governor Fashola said beneficiaries of the free open heart surgery also included people with congenital problems that come from birth and which the people are helpless in terms of availability of the opportunity to have corrective surgeries, adding that such people show up in government hospitals periodically and have their records kept while also monitoring, managing and prescribing them for this kind of interventionist policy where the alternative would have been to ship them abroad.

The Governor, who described the recovery of the patients as “quite encouraging”, thanked the members of the medical mission for giving off their time and skills for no reward, adding, “This is an intervention that is free. It is aimed at coming to give back to a people and a country that they love so dearly. The least that we can continue to say is very big thank you to them”.

Speaking on the objectives of the mission, Head of the Mission, Dr. Jonathan Nwiloh, said the purpose was to contribute their own quota to the health needs of the nation by impacting the knowledge and skill on Nigerian surgeons in order to significantly reduce the number of Nigerians who seek such cure abroad.

Dr. Nwiloh, who said the Mission started four years ago, also disclosed that it has carried out successful open heart surgery on 60 Nigerians across the country over that period, pointing out that in addition to the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH), the mission has carried out similar surgery operations in the Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital, Zaria in Kaduna State and the National Hospital Abuja.

According to him, the Lagos Mission, which is in collaboration with the Lagos State Government, is presently carrying out open heart surgery on 10 patients at the LASUTH adding that seven of the patients have already been successfully operated upon.

On the cost implication, the Head of Mission, who said the Nigerian operations were being done free of charge, disclosed that in the United States of America such open heart operation on one patient would cost $50, 000 (U.S. Dollars).