Team of UK doctors helps heal little hearts ………Madhavi Rajadhyaksha
Mumbai: For a Mumbai-born UK doctor, coming to the city to operate on tiny tots with heart defects was a calling from his homeland. For 11 children who are recuperating in a Bandra hospital, the initiative is life-saving. Tagged Healing Little Hearts, the project is giving succour to a city which is struggling to reach essential heartcare services to its children.
Dr Sanjiv Nichani who works with UKs National Health Services and a team of doctors has been at the Asian Heart Institute (AHI), Bandra since Monday to operate on poor children with congenital heart defects. One of the oldest among the patients is 12-year-old Kalyani Mhatre from Panvel who was born with a complex condition called tetrology of the fallot and operated upon by the team on Monday.
A childs defect remaining untouched for 12 years is unheard of in countries like the UK and speaks volumes about the poor provisions for paediatric heart surgeries in Mumbai, said Dr Nichani. In the UK, most defects are detected when the child is still in the mothers womb and are operated within the first year of birth.
Statistics bear out his concerns. Doctors estimate that nearly every 10 per 1,000 children in India are born with heart defects but a meagre 30 to 40% of these defects are picked up. Of those diagnosed, less than 5% are estimated to receive treatment in Mumbai.
Like five-month-old Francis Solomon, the son of a tempo driver from Kurla who has the same condition as Kalyani. Though diagnosed at birth, he didnt get treatment as his father couldnt foot the surgery cost. The surgery cost Rs 3.5 lakh in private hospitals which I couldnt afford and in Sion hospital, I was told to come back when he was three, said his father Solomon. The Healing Little Hearts subsidised Francis surgery on Monday but Solomon is still trying to raise Rs 75,000 of his pending expenses.
Dr Richard Firmin said the UK team had formed a charity in the UK which would raise funds for Mumbai kids and intended to come every two to three months to operate upon them. They had first visited the city in February. Dr Ramakant Panda who heads AHI said they were looking at a long-term association with UK doctors with the hope of reaching treatment to at least 50 children a month.
ON THE ROAD TO RECOVERY: Dr Sanjiv Nichani with Kalyani and her grandmother at the Asian Heart Institute in Bandra