I will be traveling to Nigeria to serve as a pediatric open heart surgeon on a volunteer healthcare team. While in country we expect to perform roughly 20 life saving procedures to children who would otherwise be at the mercy of a very inadequate healthcare system.
Our team will be serving indigent patients at no cost from around the Anambra state of Nigeria. This is a population that lives without access to any reliable healthcare, and without the work that our team is doing almost all of the patients we see would be at risk of becoming critically ill and passing away due to their conditions being left untreated.
While in the country we will not only be performing life saving operations, but will also be educating in country nurses and physicians on the procedures that we perform. It is the goal of the VOOM Foundation to not only help save lives, but to also build a reliable open-heart surgery program in Nigeria through hands on training with medical professionals that travel on their teams.
The mission to Nigeria with the VOOM Foundation was truly transformative for me as a congenital cardiac surgeon, but also to all of the patients that we touched during this incredible journey. I personally operated on 9 children and all of them were extubated and doing well by the end of the mission, which was an exceptional outcome. Our perfusionist, Lindsey Stuhm also from Akron Children's Hospital was busy building cardiopulmonary bypass circuits thru the late hours and the CICU faculty and nurses even donated blood to make sure we did not have to delay surgeries in the morning.
I cannot describe how incredible the experience was for me and I remain fully committed to traveling back ot Nigeria next year with this fabulous team.
