A state of the art Cardiac and Renal centre owned by the Lagos State Government went into operation last week, raising the hope of local treatment for those suffering from cardiac and renal-related diseases. OYEYEMI GBENGA-MUSTAPHA reports.
Nigerians with either renal and/or cardiac medical problems need not travel abroad anymore to get treatment following the commissioning of a state of the art facility in Lagos to take care of their peculiar medical needs.
The one stop medical facility owned by the Lagos State Government was constructed on a once flood prone piece of land within the premises of the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH) Annex, Gbagada General Hospital, Gbagada, Lagos.
The 67-bed facility already opened to the public, spreads over three floors and provides a state of the art cardiac care and renal centre, with eight specialized out-patient clinics, Catheterization Laboratory or Cathlab (the second in the country) and a 64-CT scan.
of the art equipment
A catheterization laboratory is an examination room in a hospital or clinic with diagnostic imaging equipment used to visualize the arteries and chambers of the heart, and treat any abnormality found.
The Centre built by Deux Project Limited, has a four-bed intensive care unit; a modular theatre unit with two theatre suites with laminar flow air-control, central sterilization and supply unit; four bed recovery room echo lab; stress lab; 24 dialysis machines; pharmacy; laboratories; ophthalmology clinic for eye screening; physiotherapy/rehabilitation unit; conference rooms; seminar rooms with Telemedicine facility; consultants’ and resident doctors’ offices and four unit. It also has two units of five bed high dependency wards.
Commissioning the facility last Wednesday, Lagos State governor, Mr Babatunde Raji Fashola said: “This will be a centre of reference for cardiac and renal patients allowing for cardiac investigation and treatment through catherisation and insertion of pacemakers, open heart surgery, cardiac by-pass operations and a host of similar life-saving procedures.”
Fashola reiterated the determination of his administration to fulfill the promises he made to the electorate in providing sustainable healthcare, adding that “the turning point was when we took President Yar’Adua to a Saudi Arabia hospital to manage a kidney ailment. It was a low point for us because we have it on good authority that the Saudi hospital was built by Nigerian doctors who left the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) in the 80s.
“Many of them, who I met on my travels, complained that they wanted to come home and practice but there was no hospital comparable to where they were accustomed to working. I told them that we would do something. We now have a hospital that has 24 dialysis bed stations, 20 beds for general ward use, two high dependency wards with five beds each for patients in intensive care, four post-surgery beds for patients who just finished surgery, two post-cathlab beds, two surgical theatres built to the most contemporary standard to cater for people who are critically ill”.
He said: “Every detail has been taken care of, including the fact that there will be no strike by any of the employed member of staff, in the employment of the state’. Care, he also said, has been given to details in the construction and equipping of the centre to ensure that all equipment, instruments and fittings in the hospital are of international standards.
“All the equipment, instruments as well as clinical and non clinical furniture have been sourced from the leading manufacturers in the world. In the last sixteen years, the government of Lagos State has invested a lot of resources in revamping the health sector, as it is a centre of excellence driven to cater for taxpayers and its citizens.”
Governor Fashola said: “Even the road network was considered. Gbagada residents including Medina Estate, Deeper Life Church, the hospital itself and others in this area always experience flooding. We were advised to replace the laterite with concrete for the roads. That has been done and it will last for at least fifty years.”
Knowing what Nigerians go through abroad when seeking for treatment, Fashola said: “We also foresee the start of medical tourism from across West Africa into Lagos. So, we have planned accommodation within the complex for relatives who may want to accompany (their ailing) relatives here for treatment and the land for construction and management has been set aside. We will discuss with some hotel owners, if they can also set up some branches here. If our sick people and their accompanying relatives pay abroad for accommodation and feeding, there is no excuse not to make these payments to these investors. “
The Health Commissioner, Dr Jide Idris said the state embarked on the project as a result of the government’s determination to provide quality healthcare, following a result of the statistics gathered from the different missions, which hitherto helped it in deciding what medical facilities to provide.
He said: “Statistics from the free hypertension and diabetes screening programmes conducted in the state in the past seven years revealed that on the average, 20 per cent of the clients had hypertension, while five per cent had diabetes mellitus. The prevalence of end-stage renal disease in Nigeria is estimated at 290 per one million. For these patients, renal replacement therapies in the form of dialysis or kidney transplant are critical to improve the quality of their lives and prolong same.”
Dr Idris said: “Apart from the fact that cardiovascular diseases (CVD) are the conditions that affect the heart and blood vessels throughout the body, they range from the common ones, such as hypertension and coronary heart disease to the uncommon congenital malformations (that are acquired from birth).
“In Nigeria, only 50 units provide dialysis services with 15 or 30 per cent of these in Lagos, while 80 per cent are in the private health sector. The state established modest heamodialysis units at the Gbagada and Alimosho General Hospitals as well as the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital, with only few public health facilities performing renal transplant procedures. The construction of the new cardiac and renal centre was really inspired by the medical missions that came to the state and did some procedures on patients between 2004 and 2011,” he said adding that the facility, though put in place by the state government, but is being run as a concession by Renescor Health Limited Liability Partnership.
“Not only that, we also do know that these two diseases jointly cause serious complications in people who have these problems; and once you have these problems, you have them for life if they are not properly treated”, Idris explained.
The Commissioner said the State government had over the years earmarked as part of its free health policy quite a huge chunk of its budget to sponsor people abroad on various medical problems that could not be treated in the country where the needed expertise and facilities are not available stressing that it is the copulation of these factors that prompted the State government to build the Cardiac and Renal centre.
”A copulation of these factors prompted the need for us to build facilities locally, find a way of staffing them locally to provide the needed services to treat people of these ailments, reduce the number of money we are spending to sponsor people abroad, and more importantly to build local capacity,” he stated.
Dr Idris said setting up of the facility will help bring back home Nigerian medical specialists referring to the facility as a form of ‘brain gain’ to defeat the ‘brain drain’ phenomenon stressing that over the years quite a number of indigenous medical personnel have left the country for greener pastures outside of the country due to lack of infrastructure and facilities with which to exhibit their skill (locally).”
”We have over 2000 specialists in the United States, similar number in Europe and Canada. And this is one way of brain gain instead of brain drain because if you established a facility with the right equipment and infrastructure, we can use that to attract the specialist abroad back home where they can exhibit their expertise and at the same time build local capacity here. That was the basic underlining reason why we decided to embark on this project,” he said.
Giving detailed description of the features of the facility, Senior Nursing Supervisor, Mrs Kemi Ogunyemi said: “The 67 bed facility sits on 2, 317 square metres or 24, 792 sqaure feet of land. The design provides access to all the floors by two bed lifts and a wide ramp which allows two trolleys to pass simultaneously. Fire service stair ways are provided at the side of the elevators and at the back of the building.
“The Ground floors is the Renal centre. There are four specialist clinics with reception/waiting area, offices for social workers, counseling, dietician, clinical psychologists, a large conference room with vending machines. So also are Medical Records office; Triage area, pharmacy; four large dialysis cubicles with five bed stations each; four other dialysis rooms, i.e., two private and two isolation rooms; technical room; kitchenette ; treatment room and Sluice room.”
She said the Cardiac centre is located on the first floor. “It has four specialist cardiac clinics with reception/waiting area; resting and stress test electrocardiography (ECG) rooms; Echocardiography laboratory and exercise room; Cardiac rehabilitation room; community conference room; two private wards; six cubicles with five bed each-two of these are specially equipped for high dependency critically ill patients and Side laboratory.
“While the Second floor has Telemedicine conference room; theatre suites, two with reception and central sterile services department (CSSD); anesthetist, recovery and perfusion rooms; five bed intensive care unit; 64 slice CT scan; Catherisation laboratory and two bed recovery room; offices for specialist physicians and surgeons; ECG room and side lab and treatment/medical room.”
The Managing Director of Renescor Health Limited Liability Partnership, Dr. Ladi Awosika who signed the concession agreement with the government gave kudos to the State government for building the state-of-the-art facilities which he described as first of its kind in sub Saharan Africa taking out South Africa and Angola.
He said the Cardiac and Renal centre has been built to very good specification and, “specialists who have signed up with the company attest to it. The centre has facility for telemedicine which will make every procedure going on in the facility to be reviewed by colleagues anywhere in the world thereby ensuring that training and cutting edge facility therapy will be available at the facility.
Awosika explained that Messr Renescor is made up mainly of Nigerian specialists in Diaspora who could not get any space to work in Nigeria, and that when they saw what was on ground; they pledged to contribute their quota through the facility.
”As at today we have about 200 Nigerian specialists who have signed on to be a part of this. Some of them have decided that it will not even be for money, rather they will take one or two week vacation to be at this centre to impact their knowledge and skills to the people of Lagos in particular and Nigeria in general”, he said.
Awosika said more facilities of the magnitude of the cardiac and renal centre is required in the State to be able to satisfy the demand of more than 21 million residents of the State and promote medical tourism in Lagos. He thereafter pledged that his company will not let down on the concession.
