BY CHIOMA OBINNA

As Nigerian surgeons gathered penultimate week to sharpen their skills on minimal access surgery, experts have blamed lack of infrastructure as a major factor militating against the practice in the country.

The doctors, who boasted that Nigeria has the best surgeons in the world, lamented the frustration of trained professionals to practice with little or no infrastructure on ground.

Speaking during a two – day Annual West Africa Workshop on Fundamental of Research & Career Development Course of the Association for Academic Surgery (AAS) in partnership with Lagos State College of Medicine (LASUCOM) and LASUTH,

President, Association of Nigerian Physicians (AMPA) in Diaspora, Dr. Fiemu Nwariaku, said the aim of  the workshop, the 4th in series, was to improve the skills of doctors and fellow academic surgeons in Nigeria on  minimal access surgery.

“We were here in March, when we operated on some of the patients, using some new technologies. Then we did some gall bladder removal laparoscopically, which is the keyhole surgery. Now we are going to do more and also on achalasia (disease of the oesophagus) cases among others.”

Corroborating his views, Chief Medical Director of LASUTH, Dr. David Oke disclosed that the training was necessary in the spirit of clinical practice using evidence – based medicine.

Oke who scored Nigerian surgeons excellent despite the infrastructural challenges noted:

“Our surgeons have done three minimal access surgeries and it is not as if they are just learning. Rather, it is to brush up their skills.” He said the new skill would go a long way to help the 70 per cent of local interventions currently offered at LASUTH expressing hope that within a year or two, no Nigeria would be taken abroad for surgery.

Minimal access surgery is surgical intervention with absence of  long incisions on the body that makes the surgery almost painless and results in no scarring while achieving the same results as open surgery.

The surgery reduces the hospital stay drastically as well as cost effective and accessible and is applicable to all fields that deal with organs inside the abdomen, the most popular among them being gall bladder surgery among others.