Muhimbili goes high tech to repair children’s heart defects

Dar es Salaam. Tanzania yesterday made a giant leap in modern medical technology with the announcement of a high tech device to treat children born with heart defects.

For the first time at Muhimbili National Hospital (MNH), surgeons will be able to repair the heart defects of children painlessly and with no blood loss.

Special single hand-guided devices costing about Sh1.4 billion will heal the heart defects of about 50 children in a just a week, and free of charge,in a project that aims to reduce the number of patients being referred abroad for the treatment, especially to India.

The ultra-modern surgery is the first of its kind in Tanzania’s public health services and it means that those undergoing the procedure will not have to be admitted in hospital for extended periods as is the case with the traditional surgery.

Doctors in the team told The Citizen that the patients will leave hospital one or two days after surgery.

But the doctors performing the high tech operations at Muhimbili’s new cardiac centre will not be local experts just yet, according to the national hospital’s acting director, Dr Hussein Kidanto. The centre is also grossly understaffed.

“The cardiac centre has all the equipment needed to do whatever heart surgery needed,” said Dr Kidanto. “The big problem is shortage of staff.”

In the meantime, Dr Kidanto told reporters, the management has turned to foreign experts who, over the next four to six months, will come to the country in groups to work with the hospital’s small staff on complicated heart surgery and build local capacity.

The first group of foreign doctors from Saudi Arabia got down to work yesterday. For the next nine days, they will offer treatment for heart conditions in children using the most advanced technology, thanks to a programme organised by the charity organisation Little Hearts in collaboration with the Prince Sultan Cardiac Centre in Riyadh.

There are ongoing efforts to reduce barriers in accessing heart surgery in developing nations including Tanzania. This has attracted several humanitarian projects in the form of two patterns--taking the children abroad or inviting visiting surgical teams. These are not long term solutions to the shortage, though.

Several new paediatric cardiac centres are currently funded by non-governmental organisations in African countries but cardiovascular diseases in developing countries are on the rise because the centres are not permanently based in African countries.

Dr Sulender Kuboja, a paediatric cardiologist in Dar es Salaam, argues that the cardiovascular ailments have been prevalent in our local settings for many years but they are perceived to have increased only because of advances in technology, with new devices being able to diagnose them.

Said Dr Kuboja, a consultant on paediatric heart diseases: “Heart disease is not an issue of today. Most cases went undetected in the past because of lack of diagnostic tools.”

As of April this year, Tanzania was able to offer local surgical services for about 453 heart patients through MNH’s Cardiac-Vascular Medicine centre and about 110 have undergone medical tests for coronary heart diseases.

But the cardiac centre, which is a 96-bed facility with three open heart operating theatres, modern intensive care units and executive wards, has not had a fully-fledged team of local surgeons. India, the United States and Egypt, have sent their experts to help and also train local surgeons on a short term basis.

Another group of paediatric heart surgeons, working with the Israeli charity Save A Child’s Heart, is expected to arrive in the next two months. That team will be followed by other doctors from the United States, all with the same aim--to treat heart complications in under-served countries.