By Haruna Gimba
Kano State Governor, Abba Kabir Yusuf on Friday flagged off Open Heart Surgery for patients with cardiac malfunction, held at the Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital.
The free surgery was sponsored by the Saudi Arabian Government in partnership with Muslim World League and the AKTH.
Flàgging-off the exercise, Governor Yusuf re-iterated the commitment of his administration to partner with any Non-Governmenatal Organisations (NGO), and other philanthropists willing to assist in providing specialized training to the health personnel and medical care to the patients in need of such services.
A statement issued by his Chief Press Secretary, Sanusi Bature Dawaki-Tofa, said the governor expressed happiness as the initiative will augument the efforts of the state government of giving the health sector the deserved attention.
“We are very much delighted to have you in Kano state for this gigantic assistance. Kano state is the most populous state in Nigeria with over 21million People.We have the most vulnerable people, downtrodden masses that does not have any means of taking care of their health needs” said the Governor.
“We will stick to our campaign promises of building General Hospitals across the 44 local government areas and primary healthcare centres across the state, and re-introduce mobile clinics to cater for the people in the rural areas who are in need of medical attention free of charge,” Governor Yusuf said.
Head of the Medical Team from Saudi Arabia, Dr Utman Al-uthman Saad, said the medical team comprised of 20 Cardiac Surgeons who will perform the surgery and pledged to do their best to achieve the set goals.
Earlier, the Chief Medical director of AKTH, Professor Abdulrahman Abba Sheshe, said the intervention is timely as there is an increase of heart diseases related cases especially in Northern Nigeria due to the prevalence of hypertension cases.
He expressed optimism that Governor Abba Yusuf’s govermmt will formulate policies that will re-invigorate the health sector and reduce medical tourism in the search for specialized treatment.
