A Professor of Paediatric Surgery at the University of Lagos, Adesoji Ademuyiwa, has called for free surgeries for neonates.
The News Agency of Nigeria reports that a neonate, also known as a newborn, is a child under 28 days old. The first 28 days of a child’s life is called the neonatal period; a time of rapid change.
Ademuyiwa made the call for free surgery for this category of children during his Inaugural Lecture yesterday (Wednesday, November 13) at the University of Lagos.
Delivering the lecture, the second in the 2024/2025 academic session, with the theme, ‘Suffer Little Children to Come Unto Me; the Surgeon’s Sojourn in Collaborative Research’, Ademuyiwa recalled that one of the advocacies surgeons have made, over time, is that surgery fees for children should be waived.
He explained that there should not be any financial cost for the children because they did not come to the world by themselves and it is not their fault that they came into the world with health challenges.
Lamenting that children have been neglected in access to surgery, the paediatric surgeon said: “We looked at neonates, they are children less than 28 days old, and we found out that the risk of death was far higher among this group of patients compared to other patients.
“We then notice certain characteristics that lead to such conditions. For example, sepsis, reoperation, and bleeding are things that lead to death among this group of children.
“W advocated that this should be prevented. Our study shows that even though we are not on par with high income countries, nevertheless, our practice in Nigeria is still one of the best in Africa,” he was quoted by the News Agency of Nigeria as saying.
Ademuyiwa said that studies have shown that it is possible to perform primary surgery in neonates for free as well as in adults, adding, however, that while advocacy for free adult surgeries is not popular, surgeons have actually shown that it is possible to deliver free adult surgeries.
Insisting that surgery should be free for newborns, and that the government should pay for it “because children are the future,” the paediatrician added that the condition of service for medical practitioners needs to be improved to retain young specialists who are only too eager to leaving the country for greener pastures elsewhere in the world.
According to him, all his recommendations are doable because the cost involved is small compared to some of the budgets being announced daily by the government on other things.
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