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Nigerian hospital tweets live open heart surgery on eight-year-old girl

By Sophie Eastaugh
13 August 2015   |   5:03 am
EVER wondered how heart surgery works? Twitter can give you a lesson. A Nigerian hospital has live-tweeted an operation to repair a hole in the heart of an eight-year-old girl. Abuja’s National Hospital posted real-time updates of the girl’s surgical procedure, which lasted around three hours, on the micro-blogging site yesterday. The aim was to…

Nat-Hospital-CopyEVER wondered how heart surgery works? Twitter can give you a lesson.

A Nigerian hospital has live-tweeted an operation to repair a hole in the heart of an eight-year-old girl.

Abuja’s National Hospital posted real-time updates of the girl’s surgical procedure, which lasted around three hours, on the micro-blogging site yesterday.

The aim was to grow awareness of the country’s medical capabilities, hospital spokesperson, Dr. Tayo Haastrup told CNN.

‘‘We have a lot of Nigerians in need of these operations,” said Dr. Haastrup. ‘‘This is for them to know it is possible to do it in this country.”

Other hospitals have live-tweeted operations before, with an open heart surgery procedure in Houston, Texas, reaching an online audience of 14.5 million.

The operation was the third in a run of 10 major heart procedures at the Abuja hospital performed by Nigerian doctors in collaboration with a U.S. charity.

Spokesman of the hospital, Dr. Tayo Haastrup, confirmed the surgery to The Guardian, but declined to give further details.

He assured, however, that more elaborate details would be made available to journalists at a briefing today.

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