Chika Okoli, aged two years and seven months, was wheeled out of a theatre after hours of surgery to close a hole in his heart.

 

He’s among the latest to go through record open­heart surgeries run by a mission of volunteer doctors using the theatres of Garki Hospital.

 

His paediatric consultant enrolled him on the programme after months of hospital visits and ad­missions to try to keep him alive, his father Sunday Okoli said.

 

His health began depreciating when he turned four months, and a later echocardiograph showed a heart murmur, said Okoli. “It went on for nine months. Since then we have been going to hospital, taking care of him and looking for a way out.”

 

 

Okoli is among 18 children so far to undergo open-heart surgery since December last year when an international mission Hospitals for humanity began its partnership in Nigeria, using doc­tors at local hospitals.

 

Up to 250 volunteers on its list and it plans to complete a target 100 open-heart surgeries for children by June 2016, said Hospitals for Humanity founder Segun Ajayi.

 

“In the past they were sent to countries like India and else where to get these procedures done,” said Ajayi.

 

“We are proving that these cases can be done here in Nigeria at much cheaper rates and much safer.”

 

The mission also aims to improve the skills of local surgeons to do open-heart surgeries. Two doctors from Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital and a third from Usmanu Danfodio University Teaching Hospital were among the team which did 11 surgeries last week at Garki.