No fewer than 15 medical experts led by a Clinical Associate Professor of Paediatrics at the Jefferson University, Philadelphia, United States of America (USA), Dr. Odirra Nwankwo, are conducting the training, where also paediatrics patients received free surgeries.
The Guardian gathered that the UNTH’s Paediatrics ICU was the first in the country and the third in Africa, after that of Kenya and South Africa and aimed at addressing high under-five mortality ratio in the country.
Nwankwo told reporters in Enugu that, inspite of the country’s population; put at over 200 million, there was no single organised paediatrics ICU in Nigeria, even with the danger posed on medical health care of her infants, children and adolescents.
Nwankwo, a Nigerian based in America, stated that he was moved into setting up a paediatrics ICU at the UNTH in 2019, after his medical training in Europe and America with resources from friends and donors agencies as a way of giving back to the country.
He said: “ I am a Nigerian and also an American. I know that Nigeria is the most populous nation in Africa, a country of over 200 million people. But it saddens me to know that there is no single organised paediatrics ICU in Nigeria. I did my medical school here. I went to Europe and then America and trained in paediatrics. I term myself to have been lucky to have had these exposures and to have the resources that I have and I thought that one of the best ways to give back to the country is to come back and plough back what I have learnt in the United States. I know that most people do not know that in public health, there is what is called under five mortality ratio. In Nigeria, it is about 201. It means that one out of every five children will not live to see their fifth birthday. That has been happening for a while and based on what WHO says, nations that have under five mortality ratio, should focus their efforts on primary health prevention and for years, nothing has changed.
“So what I have done is to begin to make an inroad into secondary and tertiary care. I thought that coming to start a Pediatric ICU is the way to go. We have been doing this for years. I started collecting supplies from the hospitals that I work in America. In 2019, we came here for the first time to establish the skeletal structure of the pediatrics ICU. It is an ICU that has everything that any ICU in the world can have. We came with about 10 people from the United States of America.”
He stated that since the establishment of the Paediatric ICU, training had been ongoing online, some nurses and doctors of the hospital are currently undergoing training in Kenya and South Africa to consolidate the practice.
“We are supposed to come in 2020 and we couldn’t come but we continued to do online training. The other thing that we have done that is quite encouraging is that we have looked at how to develop manpower. There are only two centres in Africa that train paediatric critical care providers. One is in the University of Capetown and the other one is in Kenya. I reached out to a couple of people and connected those two institutions. As I speak to you now, we have some in Kenya and two doctors in South Africa. We thought if we have this solid framework, we should be able to have doctors that can anchor the programme even in our absence,” he said.
Nwankwo praised the Enugu state governor, Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi for the support in actualising the project, saying that since 2019 when the idea began, the governor had catered for the need of the expatriates in the mission.
Also speaking, Chief Medical Director of the UNTH, Prof Obinna Onodugo, explained that the centre, which was the third Intensive Care Unit in the hospital, would benefit Nigerians. He stated that since the establishment of the centre, the medical team had continued to train local experts and provide facilities in it free of charge, adding, “they want to nurture it to grow to be the best healthcare in Africa. To achieve that, they have been organising a series of training, which has been online and as they do that, they also come here to physically train doctors, nurses, technicians and what have you.”
He stated that the hospital was delighted to host the centre, adding that efforts would be made to sustain the service and praised Nwankwo for thinking of home.
Onodugo stated that the hospital would send more local experts to train within the year as part of efforts to sustain the program in the hospital.
