A non-governmental organisation, Team of Hope, performed free surgical procedures at Sandema on more than 40 children in the Builsa North Municipality in the Upper East Region.
Parents brought their children to the Sandema Hospital for the free surgery with a variety of surgical ailments, some of which were congenital deformities.
About 144 patients, including children, had successfully undergone various surgical operations on the fourth day of the week-long exercise, including thyroidectomy, hysterectomy, colectomy, and lipoma removal, among others.
The three-bed recovery ward of the theatre was filled with recovering patients when the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in Sandema visited the hospital’s operating room. Patients were dressed in operating room gowns and waiting in lines to be operated on.
Due to the surgeries, the hospital’s main wards were all full, and the staff—especially the theatre staff-was working overtime to make sure that every patient who had surgery was appropriately cared for until they were discharged.
In an interview with the GNA, Team of Hope’s founder and lead physician, Dr. Benjamin Akinkang, stated: “We have really performed quite a few procedures on youngsters.”
The majority of those are congenital hernias, and we’ve seen a lot of communicating hydroceles and undescended testicles as well.
We chose to investigate a baby who had severe abdominal distension since it was one of the most interesting ones, the doctor stated.
A testicular fluid-filled sac known as a hydrocele is sometimes first diagnosed as a scrotal enlargement.
The newborn had significant hydro-uretero nephrosis and urethral duplication, according to Dr. Akinkang, who added: “The kidney was actually all water, so he ended up receiving a left nephrectomy, and is doing extremely well.”
“There is another one currently on the table with Hirschsprung’s disease, a condition of the large intestine that causes difficulty passing stool.”
“He is three years old, the abdomen is massively distended, and he does not look fit, so we are going to do a colostomy for him, and subsequently refer to a paediatric surgeon.”
Dr. Akinkang stated that not all of the conditions booked were met by the team and that “with some of them, we do watchful waiting. Therefore, most of the hydroceles that we have operated on are older than four years.
“So if at that age they do not close, then they will not close spontaneously. But then, parents will have to see medical personnel to distinguish between whether it is a hydrocele or a hernia and then take the appropriate action.”
Children’s hernias, he claimed, were fixed as they developed, “but with the hydrocele, we wait for them to mature a little bit.
There were a few young children scheduled for surgery, but we advised the parents since they weren’t prepared.
If parents saw any anomalies on the bodies or general health of their children, Dr. Akinkang encouraged parents to seek medical attention as soon as possible.
Some parents of kids who underwent successful procedures and were recovering at the hospital’s pediatric unit praised the team for performing “life-saving surgeries for their kids.”
Mother of a two-year-old kid who had surgery successfully, Madam Jennifer Akanlugsi, claimed that she would have been powerless without the team’s assistance.
Source: The Independent Ghana