11th September, 2013
Nigeria’s Lagos State Government has begun another round of free corrective surgery to assist children and adults with limb deformities.
The programme Coordinator, Dr Dolapo Fasawe, said in a statement in Lagos on Wednesday that 150 people had been registered for screening for the surgery at the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital, Ikeja.
Fasawe said that no fewer than 36,000 patients had been screened since the inception of the programme in 2004, while 4,000 underwent corrective surgeries.
She said that the state government realised that many people with various forms of correctable limb deformities had either resigned to a life of begging or disability.
“There are people who do not know that some of these deformities can be corrected.
“We decided to start this programme to correct some of the deformities so that children and young adults can be useful to the society.
“Lots of people come to our clinic with various deformities, but they are not able to afford the payment for surgery.
“To address all these, we offer surgery, rehabilitation and at times, artificial limbs to make the patients to function properly,“ Fasawe said.
She said that before a patient could undergo the surgery, he/she would go through tests including clinical, physiotherapy and X-ray.
“All these tests usually take between three and four weeks; the patients will come for final screening.
“In another five weeks we should be able to do the surgery,” Fasawe said.