GPHC gets support to build paediatric cardiac care capacity

Nov 26, 2015 News

There are many children born every year with congenital heart disease. An examination of the birth situation in Guyana reveals that between 160 and 180 children are born each year with this condition. About 50 percent of these children

GPHC’s Head of Paediatric Surgery, Dr. Marisa Seepersaud.

will require some form of intervention, according to Head of Paediatric Surgery at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC), Dr. Marisa Seepersaud.
Dr. Seepersaud said that in the recent past the needed interventions such as surgeries were not readily available here to these children.
Although Dr. Seepersaud is a Paediatric Surgeon, she said that currently the GPHC – the country’s premier medical institution – does not have a Paediatric Cardiologist and in the past didn’t even have a paediatric cardiac surgical service for that matter.
Many of the children who were diagnosed with congenital heart disease were merely followed by the hospital’s resident paediatricians. “A lot of the children were lost in the system because they were not diagnosed. They might have presented with respiratory distress or have pneumonia or some other thing; many of them would have died without being diagnosed…
“Even if they were diagnosed we couldn’t do much for them because all we had was some basic medication,” said Dr. Seepersaud.
A few, however, after approaching the government through the Ministry of Health or charitable organisations such as Kids First Fund and Three Rivers, were given an opportunity to travel overseas for their assessments and cardiac surgeries.
But according to Dr. Seepersaud even with surgery done overseas there was still an aftercare challenge that remained. “They were returning to a place (Guyana) where there were no specialists to take care of them,” observed the Paediatric Surgeon.
But this state of affairs is being reversed with forthcoming support from the International Children’s Heart Foundation also known as the Baby Heart Foundation. With the support from the United States Foundation, Dr. Seepersaud disclosed that children with congenital heart conditions are afforded an improved delivery of service including surgery and aftercare.
The Foundation has also been helping to build capacity at the GPHC to cater to paediatric cardiac patients.
“Now that we understand a little more about what is required to take care of these children we have been ordering medication that could help. They (children) have got access to more rigorous investigations and certainly some of them have already benefited from surgery,” added Dr. Seepersaud.
And according to her, there is no denying that there is a great need for the paediatric cardiac service now being offered at the GPHC. “There are many children who will benefit from it. There are many staff members at all levels who will benefit from training, and the hospital itself has improved because of the presence of Baby Heart.
“We have certainly got a lot of equipment, disposals and medication donated. All of those things cost money and some of them we did not have available to us before,” said Dr. Seepersaud.
“I am very excited that the Baby Heart Foundation chose to expand their service to us,” she said, adding that Guyana is one of two territories in the Caribbean that are attempting to put in place paediatric cardiac service. The other Caribbean territory working in this regard is Jamaica, according to the Head of Paediatric Surgery.
Among the personnel that are being trained to boost the local service are nurses, paediatricians, anaesthetics, surgeons and various other specialities some of whom have been working closely with the Baby Heart Foundation since it started offering its support here earlier this year.
“We are training an entire team,” said Dr. Seepersaud, who pointed out that if efforts were being made to train a single individual at a time overseas it would take several years. “If you are training a nurse it could take one year and to train a surgeon it could take as much as 10 years…to build an entire team will take a very long time and it is done piecemeal…we have an opportunity to train our entire team,” asserted Dr. Seepersaud as she made reference to the support from the Baby Heart Foundation.
“It is very important that we function as a unit because we are dealing with critically ill patients and we have to know each other. We have to understand each other; we have to all be on the same page when we are looking after these patients, because things go at the speed of light when you are dealing with patients.
“If you are not on the same page with your teammate it may cost you a life,” said Dr. Seepersaud as she added that “this is a unique opportunity we have and we have to capitalise on it.”