By Reem Tombokti.
Tripoli, 7 August 2013:
Another successful operation to remove a brain tumour has been performed by a Libyan surgeon at . . .[restrict]a Benghazi hospital.
During the four-hour surgery Seraj Al-Zintani, one of just a handful of Libyan specialist brain and nerve surgeons, removed the tumour from the brain of a 25 year-old woman at Benghazi’s Al-Huwari hospital.
“This is one of the most difficult operations ever performed in Libya,” spokesperson at Al-Huwari hospital, Hani Al-Ereibi, told the Libya Herald, “it shows what Libyan doctors and hospitals are capable of doing.” He added that usually people would travel abroad for brain surgery.
In the operating theatre Zintani, who trained in the Ukraine, was assisted by another Libyan doctor, Rabiha Al-Qaddafi and a Syrian doctor, Anas Al-Rifai.
According to Ereibi, this is not the first time that brain surgery has been performed in Libya. He said that at Al-Huwari hospital alone, Zintani had performed six similar operations. He added that there were five or six doctors in the country capable of performing brain surgery.
Such successful surgeries offer new hope for cancer sufferers in the country. Libya has a limited capacity to deal with cancer patients, forcing many to seek treatment abroad. Some hospitals that do have facilities to treat cancer sufferers are not always able to provide sufficient medication, even for children.
