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‘No cost’ heart surgery children set to return today
A number of children who underwent crucial heart surgeries in the Dominican Republic earlier this year are slated to return to Guyana today. The move, which represents a strategic partnership forged by the Ministry of Health through the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC) with the United States-based Baby Heart Foundation along with other partners, is expected to be a long-term one aimed at saving many lives at no cost to patients.
Interventional Cardiologist, Dr. Mahendra Carpen
In fact, according to Interventional Cardiologist, Dr Mahendra Carpen, who has for the past year been rendering his expertise to both the GPHC and the Caribbean Heart Institute (CHI), this project is one that is expected to reverse the trend of parents having to solicit support from the public to seek a health care service that isn’t currently offered here. “We are lucky that we have been selected to be a part of that,” said Dr Carpen, who explained that the project has been a work in progress for a number of months.
This project is also expected to see the public hospital collaborating with the Non-Governmental Organisations currently involved in facilitating heart surgery for children.
A few weeks ago a group of 11 children, ranging from the ages of a few months to 18 years old, travelled to the Dominican Republic for surgery. Although four children are set to be operated on in the coming week, seven have already undergone surgical procedures. However, one 10-month-old child did not survive.
According to Dr Carpen, the surgery was the child’s only hope of survival although the child’s condition had already deteriorated considerably. “You will win a lot of time but unfortunately you won’t win all of the time…in looking at the underlying challenge that this child had it was very severe, very high risk and this was the only chance this child would’ve had,” said Dr Carpen.
Speaking to the need to address some cardiac challenges at an early stage, Dr Carpen explained that “it is important to do these (cardiac) operations early enough when the damage has not been too extensive and the changes are reversible.”
And in order to have a focused cardiac care programme, a Guyana Paediatric Cardiology Steering Committee was formulated. The Committee represents a collaboration of the GPHC with the Libin Cardiovascular Institute and the Universities of Calgary and Toronto and is designed to serve as the Central Committee to help organise the surgical efforts for children with various conditions that require advanced cardiac interventions.
Just yesterday the first meeting of the Steering Committee was chaired.
Added to the operations, efforts will also have to be made to ensure that the children operated on are afforded follow-up care, which according to Dr Carpen, is the most important aspect of management of any patient. As such he noted that efforts are apace to establish a specific clinic at the GPHC to cater to the returning children as well as those being screened for heart conditions. “So every first and third Thursday we are going to start that clinic…this clinic is probably going to start next month but regardless the kids returning now will be seen within a week of coming back,” Dr Carpen assured.
The follow-up care, he noted, will be primarily delivered mainly by overseas medical experts. Added to this, he said that any child screened and found to have potential heart problems will be afforded an eco-cardiogram, which is an ultra sound of the heart. The eco-cardiogram is then sent to experienced paediatric cardiologists at the University of Calgary and based on that screening process, Dr. Carpen said that moves will be made to communicate with the local doctors.
“Once a child is found to be in need of cardiac care, strategic actions will then be taken to streamline the needful surgery at an appropriate time,” said Dr. Carpen.
But although the paediatric heart surgeries are being done with support from the overseas partners, Carpen said that the intent is to ensure that local health professionals secure needful training in a couple of years. This, according to him, will help to realise a sustainable programme that is staffed by local professionals.
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