By Tony Edike

ENUGU — THE University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital, UNTH, Enugu, has resuscitated its cardiovascular surgery, otherwise known as open heart surgery, ten years after the service was suspended on account of the hospital’s movement from its old site within the Enugu metropolis to the permanent site at Ituku-Ozala.

The hospital, under the new programme being handled in collaboration with a United States-based non-governmental organisation, the VOOM Foundation, has performed five open heart surgeries on patients with heart related ailments.

About 10 other patients with heart related ailments, including six-year-old Sadia Ibrahim from Sokoto State, now on admission would be operated during the second phase of the programme by the medical experts, who left the country after the first phase of the operations yesterday.

Speaking when the Minister of Health, Prof Onyebuchi Chukwu, visited to witness a live surgery at the hospital, the Chief Medical Director, Dr Chris Amah, said the hospital, which is a Federal Government designated centre of excellence for open heart surgery, suspended the exercise about ten years ago.