Baby Heart visits GPHC for the 5th time

Surgeons from the International Children’s Heart Foundation (ICHF), Baby Heart visited Guyana for the fifth time to perform heart surgeries on children at the Georgetown Public Hospital, in addition to providing training to medical officials.
The ICHF strives to deliver the skills, technology and knowledge to cure and care for children with congenital heart disease in developing nations. The ICHF says it does this regardless of country of origin, race, religion or gender. Their goal is to make the need for ICHF obsolete and work towards this goal through their medical mission trips, where they operate on children and educate local healthcare professionals.
Since their first visit to Guyana in 2014, the trained surgeons of Baby Heart have conducted more than 57 operations on children living within the country.
According to one of the several Paediatric Cardiac Surgeons on Thursday, a total of 27 Guyanese between the ages of three months to 20 years old have benefited from their visit this time around, while training with the local medical team is ongoing.
He highlighted that though there are significant signs of inexperience within the medical facility, he noted that a lot of visible progress has been made due to previous training sessions.
“We are moving forward with all the training we’ve been doing with the medical team here. We have seen some progress, but there’s certainly a long way to go,” he said.
The surgeon explained that the types of surgery conducted included atrioventricular canals among many others.
Elaborating of the types of training sessions provided for the medical staff, the surgeon voiced that it includes bedside training with nurses and physicians. He also noted that they are presently organising lectures in an effort to maintain medical training online for GPHC nurses with Baby Heart nurses in the United States.
The Paediatric Cardiac Surgeon pointed out that it was proposed to the Public Health Minister that Baby Heart increases its trip to the Georgetown Public Hospital to four times a year. This, they said, was agreed to and through this agreement, Baby Heart has scheduled their next visit to the GPHC in September of this year.