Business Post Contributor
By Sodeinde Temidayo David
The Lagos State government has announced plans to sponsor the surgeries of patients who need to treat deformities by the physical removal, repair, or readjustment of their limbs.
This would be done through the state-sponsored Free Limb Deformity Corrective Surgery and Rehabilitative Programme.
According to the state government, more than 400 people have been targeted to benefit from the free limb deformity surgeries, which is an intervention targeted at rehabilitating people, especially children with lower limb deformities such as rickets or Blount disease and other lower limb deformities that affect their normal growth and function.
The Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Health, Mr Olusegun Ogboye, noted that the current phase of the exercise has recorded over 400 potential beneficiaries, who would be screened over two days while appropriate medical examinations were conducted.
He also mentioned that during the current phase, 80 children would benefit from corrective surgical intervention, just as others would be offered physiotherapy, nutrition and health education, as well as assistive mobility devices that would improve their health.
The senior government official added that a team of specialists would review their examination results, and those that qualified for surgery would be booked for surgical intervention within the next 10 days.
According to him, the process will be at no cost to the patients, and that patients would be offered surgery and kept overnight for observation.
“The process involves a screening where surgeons examine patients and select those eligible to benefit from surgery and others that may benefit from assistive devices and other forms of physical rehabilitation.
“Those who pre-qualify for surgery will then go through a series of diagnostic investigations, including x-rays and blood tests to check for the form of the bone malformation, calcium levels and other basic parameters,” he said during his visit to the screening site for the latest batch of beneficiaries at the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH).
He said treatments would be supervised by a team of orthopaedic surgeons, anaesthetists, nurses, and other health professionals and after discharge, patients will come for follow-up visits at the clinic, and then also go through physiotherapy to ensure we get the best outcomes.
