The Obafemi Awolowo University Teaching Hospital Complex (OAUTHC), has celebrated its 50th Golden Jubilee Anniversary and l Prof John Okeniyi, the Chief Medical Director (CMD) listed the institution’s achievement medically on research and training.
Okeniyi gave the analysis at a Press Conference to mark the Official Flag-off of OAUTHC at 50th Anniversary, on Wednesday, at Mini Auditorium of the Hospital, in Ile-Ife.
He appreciated the Almighty God for given them the grace to celebrate the 50th Golden Jubilee Anniversary of the hospital.
According to him, they have walked, crawled and it has been a good and bad times, for religious, industrial and illegality crisis has taken place in the hospital ,but they overcomed them.
The CMD said that OAUTHC is particularly a unique institution that’s located in three different towns of :Imesi-Ile, Ilesa and Ile-Ife with five campuses unlike other Federal hospitals in Nigeria.
According to him, the celebration themed:”Honouring the Past, Engaging the Present, Shaping the Future”, aimed to spotlight the institution’s legacy and galvanise it’s vision for next era of healthcare leadership.
Okeniyi explained that the hospital currently has over 6,000 workforce, stressed that the hospital had been contributing to national development, assures thatthe hospital is a foremost tertiary institutions in Nigeria.
“We have trained people from this hospital now, they are across the universe such as:nurses, Physicians, dentists, physiotherapist, things are pretended here that are used all over the world.
“Past people from here have headed some medical and dental council, they’re Registrar heading some institutions; interms of blood cancer in lucemia, we provide free treatment for decades.
“We do primary care, secondary care,tertiary care and we are the only teaching hospital in the country that does all three simultaneously and in terms of tertiary care,we are not behind”.He stated.
The CMD expressed further that they pioneer renal replacement plantation in Nigeria; they are the only tertiary hospital in Nigeria providing routine regular open heart surgery on a weekly basis.
He said that they’re the only one doing significant laparoscopic surgeries on a daily basis,the only hospital providing dental training to every resident in Nigeria.
“Our major contribution to healthcare services in Nigeria range from open heart surgery, we are the one doing open heart surgery consistently especially in children with congenital heart disease.
“Ventricular acceptance defect, artery acceptance defect, children acquire heart diseases from romantical disease, we do romantic verve replacement and mytral heart replacement.
“We also attends to adult that have coronary heart disease,after heart attacks you see people with heart damages and we do replace them in terms of vessels”. He emphasised.
Okeniyi maintained that World Health Organisation has certify OAUTHC as centre of excellent in new born care especially in neonatal care centre.We also partnering with Royal College of Pediatrics in London for child development.
“We have the largest pediatric surgical centre in Nigeria, we have the largest tool for Geriatric Centre in Nigeria and West Africa.This institution also pioneer measles vaccine, so we are doing excellently well.
“We run 10 different post graduate training services and training functions at dentistry while people come nationwide for training here with full competent staff, we have 19 fully accredited programme for post graduate training”. He stated further.
The CMD commended current administration that provided them with good leadership and finance they needed, adding that government has appropriated over N2.5 billion, which they’ll judiciously utilise to get back to where they are.
The CMD commended the entire staff that are performing excellently and highly committed, saying that the hospital is functioning at 90% in good services
He hope that within the next two month, they’ll be giving opportunity to have full complement staff, assure that the institution is assuring sound health for the citizenry to reciprocate government efforts on health sector.