Chief Medical Director, University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital, (UNTH), Ituku-Ozalla, Enugu State, Dr. Chris Amah, has explained that the urgent attention given to the Cardiac Centre was to save cost for Nigerians who travel abroad for heart surgery.

He stated that with the new development, the hope of patients to survival  had been fully restored, adding that the resuscitation of the state-of the art Cardio-thoracic theatre and that of the Oxygen plant at the UNTH, Enugu marked a turning point of his administration’s transformational reform since his appointment last year.

Declaring open the 41st Annual General Meeting and Scientific Conference of the Nigerian Cardiac Society, on behalf of the Minister for Health Prof Onyebuchi Chukwu, in Enugu over the weekend, Dr. Amah  stated that having performed Nigeria’s first open heart surgery in 1974 to rank as a world class hospital, “I am now more determined to take UNTH to the next level in health care service”.

According to him, in order to improve medical service in the hospital, “My administration has reactivated the Oxygen plant, established additional intensive care units with the state-of- the art equipment and converted the accounts and audit buildings to new patient’s wards, while a multi-million naira complex is under construction to provide accommodation to some of the UNTH 10 schools at the permanent site Ituku-Ozalla”.

In his speech, the president of Nigerian Cardiac Society (NCS), Prof Solomon Danbauchi, raised serious alarm over the rising cases of hypertension and Coronary related diseases in the country, calling on the people to imbibe good dietary culture to check the incidence.

He, therefore, used the occasion to reaffirm the commitment of the association to exploring better methods of improving the cardiovascular health of Nigerians.

Also in his remark on the occasion, Chairman of the National Cardio- Thoracic Centre of Excellence, UNTH Enugu and Provost College of Medicine UNN, Prof Basden Onwubere, had expressed joy that the centre, which lost steam, following the re-location of the hospital to Ituku-Ozalla in 2007, was now fully operational again and commended the UNTH new chief medical director, Dr. Chris Amah for resuscitating the centre.

Earlier, chairman of the local organizing committee for the conference, Dr. Benedict Anisiuba of the University of Nigeria, Enugu-campus, explained that the theme of the conference, “The Burden of Cardiovascular Diseases in Nigeria” was chosen to draw global attention to issues of cardiovascular health of the people with a view to coming out with measures to ameliorate the problem.

Dr. Anisiuba further disclosed that for the first time in such health summits, the results of the first multinational drug trial, comparing newer and older anti-hypertension agents in native Africans (NOAAH TRIAL), would be formally presented at the conference.

UNTH Enugu, he went on, “is a 500-bed hospital, but Dr. Amah, has further expanded it with wards for over 200 patients including those with neurological cases”, he stressed.

The conference, hosted by UNTH Enugu, attracted cream of medical personnel from India, Europe, Asia and some African countries, including the guest speaker, Dr. S.K. Murthy of the Innova Hospital, Hyderabad, India.