30 children to undergo heart surgery

A team of surgeons from Belgium will this week start operations on at least twenty nine children with congenital heart diseases, and other related cases, officials have confirmed. The team, which arrived in the country on Saturday, is expected to end their tour of duty on Friday. According to Dr Joseph Mucumbitsi, the chairperson of the Rwandan Heart Foundation, the medics plan to operate on 13 children all below 16 years of age with congenital heart disease. “In total they will see 29 patients in a period of one week,” he said.The first operations started yesterday morning and they will continue till Friday at King Faisal Hospital in Kigali. The team has also been supporting Rwanda through King Faisal Hospital to build the hospital’s own cardiac surgery centre mainly through scholarships to train local doctors. A paediatric cardiologist, adult cardiologist and a cardiac anaesthetist have completed their training and a cardiac intensivist is going to start training this year. The Belgian Chain of Hope team has been coming to Rwanda since 2005 for screening of cardiac patients and interventional catheterisation procedures since 2007 and open heart surgery since 2011.Dr Mucumbitsi said the team has also been taking some children to Belgium with complex or urgent heart conditions needing surgery in a well equipped centre to be treated for free. “The last case was on August 23, 2012 of a six-month old baby Fiona who needed urgent heart surgery. The baby has been operated successfully and due to the family’s inability to afford travel expenses the team found a volunteer family to take care of Fiona in Belgium,” he continued.The baby was brought back by the team after a successful surgery and recovery.A congenital heart defect (CHD) is a flaw in the structure of the heart and great vessels which is present at birth, and is the most common type of major birth defects, while valvular heart disease is any ailment involving one or more of the valves of the heart.

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30 children to undergo heart surgery