Health trends

Children benefit from cardiac surgery

Twelve children benefited from cardiac surgery carried out by a team from Chain of Hope Foundation UK at the Bustamante Hospital for Children (BHC) during a medical mission last week. Additionally, nine children received catheterisations concurrently at the University Hospital of the West Indies. Cardiac catheterisation is a medical procedure used to diagnose and treat some heart defects. The mission began last Monday. The medical team, in collaboration with Jamaica's local medical team, operated on children with various complex cardiac defects.

"Since 1996, the Chain of Hope Foundation has consistently organised missions like the one that took place (last week) to assist the Bustamante hospital with its waiting list for cardiac surgery. This invaluable contribution is a major intervention in addressing some of the more complex cases, that our local team would not have been able to undertake, resulting in the patients being sent abroad at a phenomenal cost to the Government," said Lyttleton Shirley, chairman, South East Regional Health Authority Board.

Each year, 400 to 500 children are born in Jamaica with congenital heart disease. Of that number, approximately 50 per cent will require medical or surgical intervention or will face premature death.

Currently, between one and three cardiac surgeries are done at Bustamante Hospital each week. Shirley also expressed appreciation to the Foundation for its vision and leadership in supporting the training of local nurses in cardiothoracic care, and also for its commitment for the continued training of the local cardiac medical team and to equip the new Cardiac Centre at a cost of some US$3-4 million, in collaboration with all other stakeholders.

Shirley also lauded the Digicel Foundation for its major donation of $100 million, supported by a further $40 million by Pan Caribbean Group, to build a new Cardiac Centre to facilitate the local team to carry out future major surgeries from the knowledge it would have gained from missions such as this one.

Chain of Hope has also contributed $10 Million towards the construction of the centre. This is Chain of Hope's third mission to the island this year. They performed four surgeries in February and three in September. Six heart monitors valued at US$50,000 were donated to the hospital during this mission. To date, more than 110 surgeries have been performed during surgical missions put on by Chain of Hope at BHC.

Source: South East Regional Health Authority