In November last year, King Faisal Hospital (KFH) unveiled a state-of-the-art catheterization laboratory effectively improving the testing, diagnosis and treatment of cardiac diseases. Its acquisition implies that Rwandan patients who used to travel abroad for heart surgery and incur up to Rwf20 million for treatment will now incur much fewer costs ranging between Rwf2 and Rwf4 million. Professor. Dr. Chong Wei Min, a Chief Interventional Cardiologist who recently joined KFH, states that the country’s biggest referral hospital is now positioned to harness the catheterization lab and other technologies to offer life-saving heart treatment. Dr. Chong Wei Min, who currently heads KFH’s cardiac catheterization laboratory (Cath Lab), joined the hospital in March 2021. He had been serving as Professor of Interventional Cardiology at Mahsa University in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He graduated with Distinction from the Royal Postgraduate Medical School, Hammersmith Hospital, and Imperial College London in both Internal Medicine and Cardiology. With 30 years of expertise, he is an expert in cardiac interventions and mentions he treated patients with heart attack, including high-profile officials in Malaysia. He is also the author of five books for the Royal College of Physicians, three of which are best-sellers. He has, among other medical achievements, performed over 1500 PTCA or percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty. A minimally invasive procedure that opens blocked coronary arteries to improve blood flow to the heart muscle. Dr. Chong performs among other cardiac interventions coronary angiography and angioplasty (procedures to detect & open blockages in heart arteries) and pacemaker surgery. The New Times’ Emmanuel Ntirenganya interviewed him to gain an insight into how the hospital plans to leverage the new infrastructure for improved medical service delivery. Excerpts: You have been practicing cardiac treatment for 30 years, what expertise are you bring to King Faisal Hospital and how does it matter for saving lives? My specialty is coronary angioplasty – a medical procedure performed to open clogged coronary arteries (the main blood vessels supplying the heart). This is a critical technology and it is my expertise. I successfully treated patients with heart attack, including high-profile officials. We will work as a team here [at King Faisal Hospital], and I want to reassure that anybody who comes here for cardiac treatment will get the same treatment that they would get if they go to countries like England or the United States. We are training Rwandans to be interventional cardiologists (an interventional cardiologist is a doctor who specialises in diagnosing and treating conditions and diseases of the heart and blood vessels using catheter-based procedures and specialised imaging techniques). I believe that within the next three years, you will see the first Rwandan interventional cardiologists trained from King Faisal Hospital. We want to make the hospital the best place to train in cardiac surgery and the best health centre not only in the region but also on the planet. I am impressed right now that the Government of Rwanda has invested in the state-of-the-art Cath lab [that enables the diagnosis of cardiac conditions]. What is the magnitude of the cardiovascular disease plight, and how to better tackle the issue? Heart attacks are common. If you have a heart attack, there is absolutely no time to be airlifted. The time to airlift to go to any other country [for treatment] is [about] two hours and the admission process lasts about an hour. By that time, the patient has a risk of dying. This is why we need to have our own expertise [developed locally]. I used to fly over to do procedures in other countries, but I found that eventually, every country should develop its own programme as it is not sustainable to actually have experts fly in. We need to develop our pool of talents and train our own interventional cardiologists, and it all begins with having the right programme and the right attitude. I believe this is why Rwanda invested in the Cath Lab and the additional required equipment for cardiac treatment. Heart disease is not only a burden to the patient but also to the entire family, especially because of the high cost associated with the disease. What is the best way to tackle this issue? When a patient gets a heart attack, there are immense risks of dying and it is a tragedy. But I can tell you a lot of people don’t have to die. This tragedy can be prevented. All that needs to be done is bringing the patient here for them to receive emergency treatment and I am confident to say our team is capable of reversing the situation before it’s too late. Prevention can be a solution in some cases. And to prevent cardiac diseases, we recommend not to smoke, exercise, lose weight, and basically not to eat greasy food that exacerbates risks of heart diseases. Unfortunately, in case the cardiac diseases are genetic or inherited, the only option is timely treatment. [Meanwhile], our angioplasty programme here [at King Faisal Hospital] is much cheaper than in India, Kenya, or anywhere else. What motivated you to specialise in interventional cardiology? I wanted to help people, and I realised that the most important thing is to have compassion. And this is what I want to teach my trainees. This is the kind of culture we should have because I can tell you that people come from abroad to see me because they can see compassion in my face. And compassion is something you cannot fake. I wanted to be a doctor who is kind to patients. You need passion to be a great doctor. Unless you are able to connect and care for people, you’re not going to be able to make it work. If you can look at someone’s pain and feel it, and be committed to treating them; this is what cardiology is about.
