I am a pediatric cardiologist and intensivist. I will primarily serve as the intensive care physician treating patients after cardiac surgery and cardiac catheterization (usually interventional). There is a small intensive care unit and my experience with previous medical mission work will be valuable to help recover children quickly and get them de-intensified and to the ward so we can make room for more surgical patients. Since I am dual trained as a cardiologist I can also help planning surgical interventions. I can also do echocardiograms in the ICU which will extend our ability to do that as we will only have one dedicated cardiologist.
Nigerian children. This is an underserved population. I believe this mission is the only one in country that does surgery for congenital heart disease.
We will be teaching local practitioners how to treat these children to help build local capacity. We will also be doing 2 or more surgical interventions per day which will allow these children to survive and thrive. This has been shown to not only be good for these kids, but is financially good for the country to have more healthy people.
We were able to perform over 20 successful cardiac surgeries on pediatric patients. These would not have been available to these children without this mission. The visiting team worked really well with the locals and continues to build capacity at the hospital. Someday we won't need to come at all.
