–plans to establish first paediatric ICU at GPHC

By Navendra Seoraj

THE Baby Heart Foundation (BHF) has to date successfully completed 69 heart surgeries on Guyanese children, but has lost one patient due to the severity of the child’s condition. Since joining forces with the Government of Guyana in February last year, the BHF has been working extensively to save lives and train Guyanese doctors to perform surgeries in their absence.
And, as promised, subsequent to their last visit, the team returned earlier this month to mark their fifth mission to Guyana with a brigade of 27 persons.

During their time here, they were able to complete 13 surgeries and 14 interventional procedures at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC).
This is according to Paediatric Cardiac Surgeon and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Clinical Operations at the International Children’s Heart Foundation, Dr Rodrigo Soto, who spoke with the Guyana Chronicle on Friday.
“Unfortunately, this time around, we lost one patient due to the severity of the patient’s condition. We tried our best but weren’t able to save the child,” lamented Dr Soto.
During their first trip here, Dr Soto had indicated that Guyana has one of the highest infant mortality rates in the region. This translates to about 30 deaths per 1,000 live births.
However, on Friday, he disclosed that since the commencement of their operations, the infant mortality rate has been at one per cent, as compared to the U.S., which stands at three per cent and Europe five per cent.
Nevertheless, he stressed that Guyana has a long way to go when it comes to building capacity of its physicians and nurses to handle these cases.
“We have learnt that there is a lack of good training of nurses and doctors in intensive care, so we started to do our own bit of training programmes. However, it will take at least five years before we can really see progress,” he said, but noted that commitment is needed to achieve this goal.
This is also added to the fact that in the coming years, they hope to drop the number of persons on their team to Guyana, once they have efficiently completed their training exercises with the locals.
To boost their enthusiasm and chances of achieving their goal, Minister of Public Health Dr George Norton has allowed the team to make a visit to Guyana four times a year, as compared to the past when they were making only three visits.
As such, with their extended visits, the BHF has moved to extend the size of the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and create a paediatric ICU, which allows for the separation of children from adults and seniors.
The unit, Dr Soto said, would also be the first of its kind in Guyana. Millions in equipment have already been added to the unit.
Dr Soto indicated that they looked for what the GPHC is lacking and aim to equip the unit with all the essentials.
The Baby Heart Foundation is a non-profit organisation that is based in Memphis, USA and has been in existence since 1993.
According to Dr Soto, the organisation provides paediatric cardiac services around the world.
It has been able to offer paediatric heart care through the expertise of mainly volunteer medical practitioners to 33 countries, and has thus far completed 7,604 surgeries.
Its contributions to these countries has allowed for many of them to eventually offer crucial paediatric services independently.
“The modus operandi is to build a team, travel to the site that we decided on and we do two-week trips during which we do surgeries, but we do the surgeries actually to transfer knowledge and to educate the local team. So building capacity is what we are here for,” said Dr Soto.