First Neurosurgery at Addu Equatorial Hospital

The Addu Equatorial Hospital commenced its operation earlier this year, on January. It is a 100-bed tertiary hospital converted out of the Addu Equatorial Center, specially built for the seventeenth SAARC summit which was held in November 2011.

On 18^th September 2020, medical staff from Addu Equatorial Hospital confirmed the diagnosed a 62-year-old man with severe head injury along with bleeding inside the skull. Even though, the hospital lacked the proper resources and expert medical staff to carry out the surgery, due to the nature and severity of the case, transferring the patient for medical support to Male’ was out of question.

Left with no choice, the medical staff of Addu Equatorial Hospital sough urgent assistance from the neurosurgery team of ADK Hospital, in Male’ city. Within a short time-gap from first contact, neurosurgery experts from ADK Hospital along with required equipment, was urgently dispatched to Addu which was facilitated by Aasandha Company Limited.

With the collaboration of medical staff from both Addu Equatorial Hospital and ADK Hospital, the surgery began at 11:45pm on 18^th September 2020, where life-saving decompression craniotomy and the evacuation of the hematoma was successfully completed. The patient had immediately shown signs of improvement after the surgery. At 4:45am of 19^th September 2020, the patient was safely transferred to ADK Hospital for follow-up treatment.

This was the first time a neurosurgery team was deployed to another island to conduct a major surgery in Maldives.