400 children need heart surgery – PS
MORE than 400 children with heart problems in Zambia are on the waiting list seeking Government sponsorship for heart disease operations abroad, Ministry of Health Permanent Secretary for administration Kennedy Malama disclosed yesterday.
The University Teaching Hospital (UTH), which is the country’s main referral hospital, has no equipment and specialists to treat the approximately 400 children suffering from severe heart conditions requiring surgery, and most parents cannot afford to have their children treated or operated upon abroad.
The cases of heart disease in children have been increasing in Zambia, yet the nation lacks enough facilities to adequately take care of them.
However, Dr Malama told the Daily Nation in an interview in Lusa-ka that to help the situation, government was promoting local treatment, by inviting experts from other countries to Zambia to operate on patients alongside Zambian doctors.
He disclosed that specialists from India, Japan and Israel had since been engaged for the purpose.
“We have a total of 400 children with heart problems, waiting to be operated on, but because we are still setting up cardiac surgery facilities, we are still sending them outside the country.
He also revealed that government had adopted the concept of medi-cal tourism and had embarked on the construction of specialised hospitals in various parts of the country.
Medical tourism is a situation where many foreigners flock to a country to seek specialised treatment because of the availability of specialised hospitals and clinics.
Dr Malama said medical tourism was an emerging trend on the African continent, which Zambia was slowly embracing.
He cited setting up of the Cancer Diseases Hospital as one of the classical evidence towards promotion of medical tourism in Zambia.
He expressed optimism that Zambia being a land-locked country, had great potential of becoming one of Africa’s medical tourism destinations in the next 10 years.
Dr Malama observed that once building the specialised hospitals was completed and they became operational, the number of people traveling abroad for renal transplant, surgery of the heart and brain, among others, would also automatically reduce.
He said Government would save resources and patients would not have to go through psychological stress for being in a foreign land to access life threatening condition treatment.