Nigeria needs robotic surgery -Chowdhary

In what ways are you partnering with Nigeria on healthcare? Nigeria is a developing country, India is also a developing country. We have a hospital in Delhi and we have been able to put in place all kinds of modern surgical approaches available anywhere in the world. Citizens of the developing world in Africa, Asia, […]

In what ways are you partnering with Nigeria on healthcare?
Nigeria is a developing country, India is also a developing country. We have a hospital in Delhi and we have been able to put in place all kinds of modern surgical approaches available anywhere in the world.
Citizens of the developing world in Africa, Asia, when they need healthcare, have to access it from the developed world at 10 times the cost we can deliver.
We are here to cooperate with Nigerian paediatric surgeons to partner with them, help them with capacity building and whenever there is opportunity to offer our surgical services in specialized area of paediatric surgery at a cost which is actually one-tenth of the cost in US and UK.
How are you able to  bring down costs?
A  visitor from Nigeria worked with us. Before he came to us, he stayed in the US for a month. You can ask him what his experience was. Somebody from Nigeria goes to train in the western world, he will not get the same reception as he would get when he comes to us.
We were in the same position where you are today just a couple of years ago. We have made this journey to modernize our surgery from getting out of the shackles that militate against medical growth.
We have it set up now that we have laparoscopic surgery and robotic surgery in children. Our newborn survival now is more than 95%. We have a very strong transplant programme for liver and kidney for children. The paediatric surgeons in Nigeria can benefit from that by visiting our centres, seeing our work, bringing some of us here to help them build such centres.
Laparoscopic surgeries for children are still not very widespread in Nigeria. How extensive are they as a programme?
It is very well developed. In the last two years, I have not opened any child’s abdomen. It is well developed but it requires many hours of training, a lot of hard work. Skills acquisition takes time.
Are there new conditions you have seen emerge among children in India that could be similar to Nigeria?
I don’t think there are new kinds of diseases, but there are new kinds of treatment. For example,  transplanting the liver or kidney of a baby, approaching surgery by the robotic approach.
The biggest challenge about paediatric surgeries in developing countries is uplifting the survival of newborn surgeries, and that requires lift in surgical skills, surgical planning, neonatal intensive care. Our surgical programme for children is at par with Boston and London.
The developing world is a very large world extending from the whole of Africa to the whole of Asia, and there isn’t a centre of excellence where such standard has been achieved.
What makes robotic surgery different?
It is a very exciting field. For example, if your kidney has got tumour, imagine yourself being cut open, imagine the surgeon going in doing a lot of collateral damage to other organs or trauma. Imagine yourself coming out of operation how much pain you’d have, imagine yourself sitting in hospital for 10, 12 days for the wound to heal, whereas with robotic surgery you do not need to undergo any open surgery at all.