The Chief Medical Director of Obafemi Awolowo University Teaching Hospital, OAUTH, Ile-Ife, Professor Victor Adetiloye, on Wednesday asserted that there was no reason for any Nigerian to seek medical attention abroad.
He boasted that with the level of modern equipment and numbers of competent personnel on array of medical fields in the hospital, medical tourism in Nigeria should have ordinarily become a thing of the past.
The CMD said for OAUTH to have succeeded in carrying out 70 open-heart surgeries, several renal transplants, Siamese surgeries and kneel replacement, among others, there is satisfactory alternative to western medical deliveries.
He made this assertion at a press conference organised at the OAUTH complex, as a follow-up to his inaugural lecture held on Tuesday.
He added that aside the feat attained in open-heart surgeries and renal transplants, the hospital has also scored first in double switch surgeries and pin-hole surgeries across West Africa sub-region, as he attributed the feats to commitment on the part of Federal Government through the Federal Ministry of Health.
He, however, expressed sadness over what he termed ‘inadequate awareness’ in the public on the capacity of the hospital to provide more technical health care and save foreign earnings.
The medical expert maintained that with the level of medical equipment made available at the hospital through the Federal Ministry of Health, coupled with numbers of competent personnel produced through training and retraining by the Federal Government, Nigerians need no medical tourism again.
“I want to plead with you media to give us more publicity to create awareness amongst the general public that there is no more need to go abroad for those ailments hitherto regarded as too technical and complex for Nigerian medical capacity.
“Having carried out about 70 open -health surgeries, several renal transplants, Siamese twins surgeries and double switch surgeries among many others, Nigerians have no reason seeking for medical care abroad again.”
