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Paediatric Cardiac Centre in GPHC’s future – Dr. Amir
Plans are on the horizon for the inclusion of a Paediatric Heart Centre at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC). Discussions in this regard are ingoing between the GPHC and the International Children Heart Foundation,
Dr. Sheik Amir and Dr. Debra Isaac
also known as the Baby Heart Foundation.
This disclosure was recently made by Director of Medical and Professional Services, Dr. Sheik Amir, who revealed that already the Baby Heart Foundation has a Centre in the Dominican Republic. But according to Dr. Amir, “there are plans for the future to make another centre [here] where other children can come, not only Guyanese.”
The Baby Heart Foundation has been lending its paediatric cardiac expertise to the GPHC. The collaboration is currently in its third year. Dr. Amir said that support in this regard was initialised by Cardiologist of the University of Calgary in Canada, Dr. Debra Isaac.
He explained that Dr. Isaac, together with her Cardiologist husband, Dr. Wayne Warnica, initially came to Guyana to help develop a heart ultrasound programme through the University of Calgary. In so doing, they commenced training of a number of local technicians to conduct echocardiograms.
An echocardiogram (also called an echo) is a type of ultrasound test that uses high-pitched sound waves that are sent through a device called a transducer. The device picks up echoes of the sound waves as they bounce off the different parts of the heart.
According to Dr. Amir, even as they offered their support, the team from the Calgary University during their many visits recognised that they were seeing an increasing number of children with congenital heart disease. Many of these children, although they were previously seen by doctors, were not being correctly treated.
Moreover, there was need for several of them to be sent abroad for treatment. However, Dr. Amir noted that this was found to be very costly.
“You can’t send the baby alone, you have to send a parent with the baby, pay for their accommodation and all of that, so that was expensive to the Government and some of the people too,” said Dr. Amir.
It was against this background, Dr. Amir said, that Dr. Isaac decided to introduce the GPHC to the work of the Baby Heart Foundation.
“She was the one who put us onto the Baby Heart Foundation and what they started doing was looking at the possibility of operating on our children with congenital heart disease,” Dr. Amir recalled.
The collaboration started off with the Baby Heart Foundation taking children to the Dominican Republic to gain cardiac surgical attention. However, over the past few years, experts of the Baby Heart Foundation have been visiting Guyana annually to offer their support.
“They are here in Guyana now…they have developed, to some extent, our area where we can do heart surgeries here on children. It is an area that has been developed exclusively for this purpose even as discussions continue,” said Dr. Amir.
He said that while the officials of the Baby Heart Foundation are awaiting commitment from the Government of Guyana, they have also indicated their willingness to also invest in the realisation of the Paediatric Cardiac Centre.
“We are in the third year now of this programme where they are operating on children, and so far they have had wonderful success,” said Dr. Amir. But according to him, the Baby Heart Foundation has been “getting a lot of offers from other countries to go and do the same thing, but they prefer to stick with us.”
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