The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
KAMPALA, UGANDA | THE INDEPENDENT | Health Minister Dr Jane Ruth Aceng has urged specialists at the Uganda Heart Institute (UHI) to create public awareness about the milestones reached by the institute.
According to Health Minister Dr Jane Ruth Aceng, while the services are available at the institute, there is still limited awareness about what surgeries can be done within the country and as a result once babies are assessed and found to have defects of the heart, many return home to die yet they can be saved.
Statistics show that around sixteen thousand children are born with heart complications annually, but only about fifty per cent are handled by the Heart Institute, as the facility is often faced with long waiting lists of children requiring surgeries.
According to Dr John Omagino, the UHI Executive Director, the majority of the surgeries which were being referred abroad twenty years ago can now be handled from the institute with recent improvements in capacity, both in terms of infrastructure and specialists. He says even with the improvement of services, fewer than expected children make it to the centre.
For him, the plan now is to have these children operated on where they are in the upcountry districts.
Dr Judith Namuyong, a pediatric cardiologist, says that of the 16,000 children, up to 2,000 children usually present with complex heart conditions which require an urgent intervention or quick referral.
Recognising this big need and the fact that congenital heart disease bears a ninety-five to ninety-eight per cent survival rate once handled early, Namuyonga says experts came up with an initiative they named Brave Hearts to create partnerships which can help them quickly diagnose the children, even at the level of regional referral hospitals.
She says this year alone, experts at the UHI have conducted fifty-five free closed and open heart surgeries under the Brave Hearts Initiative. Of these she says, fourteen were of the complicated Ventricular Septal Defects (VSDs) where the children were born with a hole in the wall between the two lower chambers of the heart.
They also did twenty-seven surgeries for Patent Ductus Arteriosus (PDA), a congenital heart defect a blood vessel connecting the aorta and pulmonary artery fails to close after birth.
Meanwhile, even though some of the causes of congenital heart disease are beyond control, experts urge pregnant women to avoid alcohol consumption and smoking, as their babies are more likely to develop holes in the heart when exposed.
Namuyonga says the baby’s heart is developed by week nineteen of pregnancy, but for many women, they are not yet aware by this time and continue engaging in risk behaviours, which in the end endanger their babies.
She recommends early enrollment in antenatal care as early detection of any health challenge leads to better treatment outcomes.
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