The Chief Medical Director Of Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital, Zaria, Lawal Khalid, says the hospital will carry out its first open heart surgery by the end of September.

Mr Khalid, a professor, disclosed this to journalists in Zaria on Thursday, saying the exercise will be the first in northern Nigeria.

He said the surgery will be conducted in collaboration with a University in Ghana and University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital, Enugu which is a national centre for open heart surgery in Nigeria.

According to him, the surgery was the culmination of several years of careful planning and upgrade of the capacity of ABUTH.

"ABUTH set up a cardiothoracic centre with a state of the art facility to carry out the open heart surgery.

"It will be the first time that an open heart surgery would be conducted in the northern part of the country," he said.

He further explained that as a centre of excellence for oncology treatment, the hospital is at the verge of establishing a linear treatment centre for advanced radiation treatment of cancer patients.

"We are receiving between 1500 to 1800 new cases of cancer every year and we are committed to ensuring that we give our patients the best possible treatment available to mitigate their pains where we cannot cure them," he added.

On the challenges facing the hospital, Mr Khalid said the hospital lacks basic diagnostic equipment like CT scan and poor funding for overhead costs.

He however said said the management was working hard to address the challenges with the resources available.