Beating of Children´s Hearts

Belarusian and foreign medical professionals have performed 36 most complicated heart operations within the framework of Children´s Heart charity campaign and saved 35 young lives with congenital heart disease. The youngest patient was 18 days old, an Belarus correspondent learned from Belarusian Children´s Fund, which alongside the Health Ministry is an organizer of the campaign.

The operations were conducted by a group of doctors headed by Professor William Novick, a medical director of Children´s Heart International Fund. The team consisted of 15 foreign surgeons, including healthcare specialists from Australia, Croatia, Great Britain, Ireland and the USA. This is the eighth visit to the country, but all operations took place at the recently opened National Children´s Cardiac Surgery Centre.

Professor William Novick said, the centre is equipped with the cutting-edge European tools and all necessary conditions for a wide range of operations have been created. According to the professor, it is vital to perfect the skills of the surgeons and personnel. "To raise a professional children´s surgeon is a hard and long process," William Novick said. "Let us compare. There are two kinds of adult heart operations, one taking care of valves and another - aortocoronary bypass. To master them is not a difficult task. As for a child´s heart, there are 300 possible surgical operations here. A number of them are already widely applied. Belarusian healthcare specialists learn about the rest of them during the campaigns of the kind. As many as 800 infants with congenital cardio-vascular diseases are born in Belarus each year, while 3,500 children need to be operated. To help them, it is important to develop the Belarusian school of children´s cardiac surgery and to enhance self-sufficiency.

Children´s Heart charity actions have been held in Belarus since 1996. Over this period, 147 children were operated on and more than 6,000 little patients were given medical advice.

Yekaterina Nechayeva