By Uduma Kalu
Delta State University Teaching Hospital, DELSUTH, Oghara, is acquiring the skills and facilities of Nigerian medical doctors abroad, towards becoming one of the centres of excellence in Nigerian healthcare.

This was made known by the Chief Medical Director, CMD, of the hospital, Dr. Leslie Akporiaye, while explaining  the  institution’s drive toward excellence.

Akporiaye said the hospital had adopted a two-pronged approach to achieve its plans, one of which is the development of an operative technique where Nigerian specialists in the diaspora would come from the United States of America, USA, to teach surgical trainees while the other is the skill acquisition laboratory which the hospital had  set up to enable young doctors acquire expertise in the medical field only available overseas

Speaking to journalists at Oghara on developments in the hospital,  Akporiaye said one of the skill acquisition techniques was laparoscopic cholecystectomy surgery, which is relatively unique in Nigeria.

He said: “So, if you have medical skills acquisition development centre in Delta State, then there is an opportunity of having a simulated training and lifesaving centre for the entire state.”

Training programmes would be for all health care grades from the health care assistants, to nurses, to doctors who can come and learn and even older doctors can come and upgrade their skills. This is the actual purpose of the Skills Acquisition Development Centre of the teaching hospital. Currently the training of doctors and nurses and other health workers is in this format and  the medical school,” Akporiaye said.

Explaining the advantages of the type of the surgery,  Dr. Fiemu Nwariaku,  a diaspora Nigerian medical surgeon who carried out the laparoscopic cholecystectomy, said the patient has less time to spend in the hospital after surgery but can leave  the hospital after the first day of operation.

Nwariaku said, “We would start with the resident doctors and teach them how to practice and we do some animal practice for them and then begin to work with patients under supervision, “ and that unlike the other kinds of surgery where scissors could be forgotten in the stomach, this system has less chance for that as the holes to the surgery is small and all the instruments for the operation are straight and long.

As for Dr. Steven Enamine, a registrar in the teaching hospital and one of the many medical graduates undergoing training for consultancy, said that the experience was a great one which he thought would impact on them positively.

According to Dr. Ufuoma also a resident doctor in the hospital, the hospital can be a training centre in the Delta State and the South South…Some other laparoscopic surgeries can be carried out in open virginal, gastrostomy, perforation etc. Virtually all abdominal procedure can be done.

Fibroid can be done provided it is maturated to actually remove a good chunk of the materials. However, the size of what you have to remove also determines the type of surgery to be carried out on the patient.”