Hospital makes case for orthopaedic courses at BUK, others

The Medical Director, National Orthopedic Hospital Dala Kano, Dr Muhammad Nuhu Salihu, has identified the urgent need for collaboration between the hospital and universities in the state to float more BSc courses in orthopedic-related field with a view to train more hands to deal with emerging concerns in orthopedic practice.

He made the call in an address at the 7th combined convocation ceremony for 12 sets of Schools of Post Basic Nursing Studies and Orthopaedic Cast Technology which was part of activities scheduled to mark the 60th anniversary celebration of the hospital.

He said the hospital had planned to float a diploma programme in Prothesis to train willing candidates in the production of artificial limbs but had to shelve off the plan because of the desire to upgrade the existing courses at the schools of Post Basic Nursing and Orthopaedic Cast Technology to BSc status.

He said; “Our fourth school would have been called the School of Prosthetics and the School of Orthotics, that is the school that is supposed to teach people how to make artificial limbs. Today in this country, we have only one of these schools and it is in Lagos. We had planned to go into this particular school but we recognized that the diploma that we are giving to the school of orthopaedic cast technology needs to be upgraded to BSc but because we are not a university we cannot run a BSc programme.”