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The University of Calabar Teaching Hospital (UCTH) has commenced a partnership with its United States (U.S.) Voom Foundation and U.S. Military medical research team to revamp the hospital and elevate it to world-class standards.
Chief Medical Director (CMD) of UCTH, Professor Ikpeme Ikpeme, who disclosed this at weekend during the official launch of the hospital’s newsletter, stated that the partnership would lift the hospital out of the quagmire it has been for some time.
As a fall out of the partnership, he said the hospital would conduct its first Open Heart Surgery (OHS) operation in the second week of April with the Voom Foundation.
Ikpeme said, “The hospital will join the big leagues of hospitals that have performed heart surgeries and it will be a giant stride as far as medical practice is concerned.
“We are planning open heart surgeries within the first two weeks of April 2020. We are working hard towards that with Voom Foundation and we have taken delivery of consumables for constructing a dedicated theatre suite for the surgeries. Members of staff and biomedical engineers are already on standby. We are refurbishing our machines, which will be used for the surgeries.”
On research, Ikpeme said UCTH was working on developing and building on the achievements of the Institute for Tropical Research and collaborating with the U.S. Military to research on Malaria and Drug-resistant in the tropics and that both clinical and field types of research are ongoing.
He, however, lamented the poor state of the hospital before he took over, saying within the past nine months since assuming office, the management has been working on UCTH’s vision and mission to rebuild, reboot and restore its human/material resources and infrastructure towards creating a better Teaching Hospital that would serve the state and its environs effectively.
He said water, electricity supply and sanitation have improved as clinical services like Radiology, Intensive Care Unit (ICU), Wards, Recovery Room, and the theatre enjoy almost 24 hours electricity supply, insisting that with time, other areas would also benefit.
“The water tanks have been replaced, broken pipes fixed, a water engineer has been contracted and the water regulating plan will be developed soonest,” he added.
He stated that the hospital now boasts of the best hands, best brains and minds bigger concentration of highly trained manpower.
“We are creating an environment with quality equipment that will ensure that we have excellent healthcare service delivery. UCTH is back and better and will continue to get better,” he said.
