Local charitable organisations urged to take advantage of GPHC’s paediatric cardiac programme

Dec 08, 2015 News

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With support from an overseas-based charitable organisation which has a keen focus on helping to save the lives of children, Government through the Ministry of Health is now able to offer open heart surgeries and other cardiac

care services to children here.
This by extension means a marked reduction in the usually high cost that has, from time immemorial, been associated with making such health care services available to patients.
The development, which only materialised this year, is the result of Government’s collaboration with the International Children’s Heart Foundation which is also referred to as the Baby Heart Foundation based in Memphis, Tennessee, United States of America.
This year has seen close to three dozen paediatric cardiac procedures being conducted at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC) during the course of this year.
But according to Head of Paediatric Surgery at the GPHC, Dr. Marisa Seepersaud, there still is need for more strategic collaborations if more children are to benefit from the service that is now available right here in Guyana.
She was at the time responding to a question from this publication as it relates to the relevance of local charitable organisations that have over the years helped to facilitate the accessing of medical care overseas for children with cardiac ailment.
But according to Dr. Seepersaud since forging the partnership with the Baby Heart Foundation, efforts have been made to offer the local charitable organisations an opportunity to take advantage of the paediatric cardiac care programme now available at the GPHC.
“We have offered them to be a part of our planning and everything that comes with it, and if they want to direct some of their funding to our patients to help them, we were open to that too,” related the Head of Paediatric Surgery.
However, Dr. Seepersaud made it clear that accessing the local programme is not dependent on funding support from the local charitable organisations.
“Even if they don’t want to do that they would still benefit from what services we have to offer,” she asserted.
Despite this offer she continued, “they have not really taken us up on it completely…they have expressed interest in it and they may have attended one or two meetings (in this regard) but we have almost monthly meetings and some of these organisations have not been attending regularly.”
Dr. Seepersaud is, however, not holding the representatives of the local organisations culpable, as according to her “…maybe we need to do more work to invite them so that they can see all that has been achieved so far.”
It would be highly economical if the local programme is fully utilised, Dr. Seepersaud opined. This is in light of the fact, she explained, that taking an ailing child to North America, for instance, to have open heart surgery done could amount to as much as US$30,000.
Having the same surgery done at the GPHC by specialists from the Baby Heart Foundation costs Government as little as US$5,000. The cost incurred is mainly to facilitate the transportation and accommodation of the visiting team, Dr. Seepersaud noted. This is in spite of the fact that cardiac services are usually very costly.
But according to Dr. Seepersaud, “the reason they are able to achieve the reduction is because they depend on volunteers.”
A recent visit which concluded here saw an 18-member team offering their services. Of the team members, 15 were volunteers.
“We don’t have to pay them anything…they are actually using their vacation time…they could be on a beach somewhere. Some of the volunteers even get donations from their hospitals to help us here. Cardiac surgery is very expensive, but we are able to offer it at a sixth or fifth of the cost available elsewhere,” said Dr. Seepersaud.
The collaboration with the local charitable organisation is crucial too since, according to Dr. Seepersaud, several of the patients who were sent abroad for surgery in the past were not properly diagnosed.
“In the past, patients have been sent for surgery, but when they got to where they were sent they did not have the correct diagnosis and did not need surgery, or they were not adequately prepared when they went over for surgery and the surgery had to be cancelled,” Dr. Seepersaud informed.
It is for this reason, she added, “that is why we want some of the local charitable organisations that have an interest in Guyanese children to be a part of it, because it would be money that is better spent.”
But even ahead of the support from the Baby Heart Foundation, Dr. Seepersaud disclosed that the GPHC had established a committee in 2013 specifically aimed at targeting children in need of cardiac care. The efforts in this regard revealed “a huge patient-load that was not being serviced at all. We identified the patients with the help of Dr. (Debra) Isaacs and some of our other Canadian colleagues; dozens of these patients were in dire need of surgical intervention,” admitted Dr. Seepersaud.
It was against this background, the Head of Paediatric Surgery noted, that deliberate efforts were made to reach out to the Baby Heart Foundation to bring cardiac relief to young patients.
In addition to technical support, the Baby Heart Foundation, which has Paediatric Cardiac Surgeon, Dr Rodrigo Soto, as its Chief Executive Officer, has also been helping to train a local team that will eventually be able to conduct paediatric cardiac care independently.

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