Nigerian Doctor in Texas successfully performs Fetal Surgery

by U. K. Uwadinobi

It is a story that has become a viral phenomenon in the digital world of social media. A story about a Nigerian doctor, pediatric surgeon Oluyinka Olutoye, who successfully performed fetal surgery to remove a tumor inside a little baby girl that was “as big as the 1 – pound body of the little baby” at the Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston. This incredible medical feat by a Nigerian doc- tor in U.S. earlier this year in March, took the medical world by storm and is still reverberating with incandescent joy illuminating the hearts of many around the world. The world is not just taking a cursory glance, but a prolonged look of interest at Nige- ria and Nigerians through a different prism. And what a real- ization it is that Nigeria is not all denizens of corruption. Beyond the wellsprings of Nigeria’s oil fields invariably the locus of the society’s moral decay and na- tional economic malaise, are a different kind of natural reserves — the incredible pool of talented young individuals, the likes of Dr. Oluyinka Olutoye — spread around the country waiting to be tapped. Who will explore the in- credible pool of talents in the country and harness the potential benefits they present to Nigeria and the rest of the world? “Only in America,” we often hear, why can’t wear “Only in Nigeria,” too? This exciting story illustrates a befuddling paradox of national pride and pain about Nigeria. On one hand a country that is inherently blessed as a gift to the world as demonstrated in that pediatric surgical unit of a Texas children’s hospital; and on the other hand, a country taken over by a ruling class of corrupt government and their cronies, who have turned it into a nauseating spectacle o global scorn and dis grace, while heartlessly watching their fellow citizens die from hunger, disease and poverty amid national wealth from petrodol lars. Perhaps what Nigeria needs as a last ing intervention analogous to the medical feat Olutoye pulled off in that Children’s hospital in Texas is to go under the knife for a political surgery to remove the massive tumor festering inside it for too long!

U.K. Uwadinobi is a Nigerian writer based in New York

Posted by on Nov 16 2016. Filed under Community News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

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