2.9 million children require elective surgeries in Nigeria

The Chief Medical Director of Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), Chris Bode, has said 2.9 million children require elective surgeries in Nigeria annually and almost 300,000 of them reside in Lagos.

The professor of surgery and the hospital’s consultant paediatric surgeon said despite the high burden of surgery, there were no dedicated surgical suites for children in the state until the Kids O-R theatres were built in the hospital.

Prof Bode, in a statement after the commissioning of the two-room children’s surgical suites specifically for children requiring surgical operations, said the centre was a $450,000 (over N184, 878, 000) donation from KIDS O-R, an overseas benevolent philanthropic organisation that funds the establishment of children-specific operation rooms in high volume surgical units to enhance survival and minimise access challenges for children undergoing surgical procedures.

He said: “Children have a wide range of surgical needs, bringing along a number of birth defects that may require operations or complicate planned procedures. Although children under the age of 14 years constitute 45 per cent of the population, provisions for their surgical needs are subsumed in those made for adults in most centres. It is therefore common for surgeons who care for kids to queue up, waiting to operate upon children in the same theatres where adults are prioritised and given preferential care over children, even in urgent circumstances. Elective cases also suffer prolonged delays.”