Support hole-in-heart children
About 200 children with ‘hole in heart’ conditions need financial assistance to undergo surgery in order to have normal lives, a heart surgeon at the National Cardiothoracic Centre, Accra, Dr Baffoe Gyan, has said.
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Hole in heart is a defect in children which changes the normal flow of blood through the heart and severely affects their health.
While some of the affected children need initial surgery to survive immediately after birth, as well as avoid complications during subsequent surgery, since other signs and symptoms will appear between six months and two years, others need correctional surgery to fully recover from the heart defect.
According to Dr Gyan, if these children, once diagnosed with hole in heart, were not operated on early enough, they risked dying from complications during major correctional operations or they could not be operated on at all.
Dr Gyan, who was speaking to the Junior Graphic at the Cardiothoracic Centre in Accra, said there were many types of hole in heart defects, some being more complex, while others were simple and common.
“Some of the complex ones need urgent surgery as soon as a baby is born to save his or her life. Those with not-so-complex hole in heart defects are able to live with it for some time but need to be operated on before they start school, since the condition could affect their physical and mental well-being,” he said.
That was because most children with the hole in heart condition were unable to grow properly, were always sick, got tired easily, isolated themselves from their peers during play time, among others, he added.
Dr Gyan said the children had not been operated on because their parents had not been unable to raise their part of the money to support the centre for the surgery.
The National Cardiothoracic Centre paid part of the total cost of every surgery.
He said it cost between GH¢5,000 and GH¢14,000 to perform an operation on the heart, depending on the type of defect in the child.
He said on the average one to three children died at the centre every month because of delays by parents in getting funds for operations, adding that “they bring the money only when it is too late to save the children’s lives”.
Dr Gyan pleaded with the public not to wait till they saw a child with a hole in heart defect on television asking for assistance before they offered support, as by that time the defect might have worsened so much so that an operation might not even save that child’s life.
“The centre is always open to the public to walk in anytime and save a child,” he added.
Shedding light on what a hole in heart defect was, Dr Gyan said the heart had two sides separated by an inner wall which prevented the mixing of the blood because one side of the heart has bad blood while the other has good blood.
“So if a baby is born with a hole in the inner wall that separates the two sides of the heart, it means the right side which has blood poor in oxygen that had to be pumped into the lungs has mixed with the left side which has blood rich in oxygen and ready to be pumped out to feed all the other organs in the body and this prevents the child from functioning well or lead to death if the appropriate measures are not taken,” he added.
Story: Eugenia Adjei-Mensah