20 Volunteers from the Royal Victoria Hospital, friends of Nigeria, Save a Heart returned from a successful mission on the 5th April 2014 after spending two weeks performing 12 open heart operations in Enugu State, Nigeria. The Northern Ireland registered charity were on their second mission to offer heart surgery to the local community of the Enugu University Teaching hospital which serves a population of over 20 million, twenty times the population served by the team in Northern Ireland. The first mission from the Royal Victoria Hospital took place last year when 5 operations took place with many lessons learnt and on this occasion 12 major heart operations were performed.
On arrival at Enugu University teaching hospital the team wasted no time in setting up a screening clinic seeing between 30-50 patients and reviewing their symptoms and heart scans to decide upon suitability for surgery. Many difficulties were faced including equipment failures, changes in culture, climate, working and living conditions. Fortunately there were no language barriers as all patients spoke English as a second language. Also challenging was working with the local team, trying to raise standards of how they work in difficult conditions to ensure patients had safe and successful operations. There is no doubt that 12 operations was a very good measure of two weeks of hard work.
Fund raising is on-going for future missions and if you would like to support this good work please visit the website at www.sahnigeria.org.uk. The next trip is scheduled for March/April 2015.
