The University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital (UPTH) has provided free cardiac procedures to 22 patients, valued at over N10 million for each patient.
The initiative, which took place from January 2025, was made possible through a collaborative effort between UPTH and international partners, including the University of Michigan and the Cardiovascular Forum.
While speaking during a press interview after the first groundround for the year held in the hospital, the Chairman Medical Advisory Committee(CMAC) Professor Datonye Alasia, explained that the international experts were on a mission to bring access to super-specialized cardiac services to patients who cannot afford them.
Alasia, who noted that the expert were not only in Nigeria to offer service, but was to train specialists, added that the procedures performed during the mission included implantable device implantation and cardiac resynchronization therapy, which typically cost between $20,000 to over $100,000.
However, through the collaborative effort, patients received these life-changing procedures free of charge.
He said: “The mission also provided training opportunities for medical staff at UPTH, enhancing their skills and expertise in cardiac care.
“Most patients in Nigeria pay out of pocket for medical services, and many cannot afford the high costs of cardiac procedures.
“We want to increase the number of people who are skilled in cardiac care, so we can expand access to these services to people within Rivers State and beyond.”
Meanwhile, the team, led by Dr. Neil Grubb, a Cardiac Electro-Physiologist, and Jagdeep Singh, a Cardiologist and Cardiac Device Implanter, conducted a one-week training for cardiologists and physiotherapists on modern techniques in treating heart ailments at the University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital (UPTH).
The training, which was organized by the Cardiovascular Foundation in the UK, focused on pacemaker implantation, Cardiac Resynchronization Therapy, and other advanced techniques.
Speaking to journalists, Dr. Grubb explained that the mission was aimed at teaching Nigerian doctors and nurses cardiac techniques, rather than just treating patients.
He noted that many patients in Nigeria die from treatable ailments due to lack of access to care and the poor healthcare system.
According to him, “The main aim of our mission is not to treat patients, although we love to treat patients, and the patients we treated this week undoubtedly benefited from the treatment they received. But the main thing is that we want to leave a lasting legacy in Nigeria, which means that we are spending as much time teaching as we are spending in actually doing the procedure itself.
“The team hopes to train a generation of physiologists and cardiologists in Nigeria, with plans to return to the country three to four times a year to provide further training and support.”
He also highlighted the challenges facing Nigeria’s healthcare system, stating that “here in Nigeria, you do not currently have a well-developed healthcare system as ideally, you should have.
“Though there are pockets of expertise in Nigeria where medicine is practiced extremely well, there are also areas where patients are denied treatment just because of lack of resources. Many patients are completely unable to afford any form of medical treatment, and you know that some people are dying of conditions that can easily be treated.”
Dr. Grubb also explained that pacemaker is a device implanted in the heart of persons with abnormally slow heartbeats, adding that the devices can be checked from time to time to ensure that they are functioning optimally and the patients are doing well after implantation as a team of doctors have been trained at the UPTH to keep checks on the patients.
“So pacing is a technique that we use to plant an electronic device under the skin of the patients, attached to wires connected to the heart. They have to be guided using x-ray cameras and it requires special trainings to implant these devices. They are also quite costly but they are also a lot of wastage in western healthcare, so we are using some of the devices that cannot currently be used in hospitals in the United Kingdom and instead of wasting and throwing them away, we brought them across here where they can be used for the benefit of people here,” he explained.
