Nigeria: Abuja Residents Throng Indian Hospital for Medicare

  19 August 2011 Source: All Africa . com
Residents of Abuja with various ailments have continued to throng the newly opened Primus International Super Speciality Hospital in Karu, Abuja for medicare.
The hospital which opened its doors to patients last April is owned by New Delhi-based Primus International Super Speciality Hospital, India.
When City News visited the hospital yesterday, patients with traumatic cases and many others were seen seeking medical help from Indian doctors.
One of the patients, 16-year-old Miss Chinyere Emezie, had just undergone ahip replacement surgery.
The hip’s femur head along with acctabular cup were broken when she fell from a height at 12 years and had undergone three surgeries earlier, adding that her femoral stem, acctabular cup and head’s were implanted.
The girl’s ball and socket had been damaged by arthritis.
Chairman of the hospital, Mrs Achla Dewan, was not present, as she was said to have travelled to India. An orthopaedic surgeon who specialises in joint replacement in the hospital, Dr Kaushal Mishra, maintained that Miss Chimezie’s young age posed no trouble to the surgery.
She said the patient is the youngest Nigerian to have an uncemented total hip replacement with large ceramic head within the country.
“The only implication for the joint replacement is the pain. At 16, growth is complete for girls. The bones only increase in size,” Mishra noted.
The surgery, according to the hospital’s Director of Administration, Mr Nitin Dewan, was done for “$8,500 (N1,275,000) to help her get back to normal life. In the USA, something similar would have cost between $20,000 and $25,000.”
Mishra, who said many patients besieged the hospital with broken bones due to numerous auto crashes in the country, lamented that they (patients) went without their medical records and that made management of their cases difficult.
He said such records belonged to patients and called on Nigerian doctors to allow patients move with their files.