Procedure proves life-changing
MBOMBELA - Following a first-ofits-kind paediatric procedure in Rob
Ferreira Hospital, infants and children in Mpumalanga will now get these procedures done on home soil.
Last Thursday, the Department of Health announced that the newly opened paediatric ward will conduct a series of procedures that include laparoscopic Nissen fundoplication, posterior saggital anorectoplasty and choledochal cystectomy.
Nissen fundoplication and feeding gastrostomy are operations performed on children with cerebral palsy, as most of them cannot feed themselves and end up developing refluxes, which result in aspiration pneumonia.
These cases were always referred to Gauteng for further management, however, this will no longer be the case, as the only paediatric surgeon in Mpumalanga for public hospitals, Dr Elliot Motloung, and a team of other professionals, such as Prof Nyaweleni Tshifularo, Dr Shamaman Harilal, Dr Kirthi Ramdhani, Dr Patrick Matloga and others are now conducting them.
These children’s parents often spend more than one hour just trying to feed them one meal at a time, but after this operation, it takes 10 minutes, and they do not get multiple admissions to the hospital for aspiration pneumonia.
Motloung said they do this operation by using minimal access surgery, as they do not have to open up the patient, because he is a laparoscopic surgeon. Since joining the hospital, Motloung has done 84 surgeries in this paediatric ward. Most of these children are from rural areas in Mpumalanga.
“These services will make sure these children do not die on their way to Gauteng or somewhere else, trying to get a bed. It means a lot to them, because most of them are from rural places and their parents do not have the resources to get them the surgeries.”
The MEC for health, Sasekani Manzini, said one might ask why they are so excited, and what is so special about paediatric surgery.
“Because children are not little adults, they have some unique problems that require very special surgical management. Their physiology is different, and since they are still developing, their organs are not always in exactly the same location as adults’. They also do not vote, so we have another critical role: to be their advocates for the best surgical care in the world. If healthcare is a social good that should be provided to every citizen, then it has to start with children.”
Manzini said they welcomed this generous gift from Paediatric Care Africa and the Lowveld community, which helped with the renovation project to make the paediatric surgery ward conducive and child-friendly.
The founder of Pediatric Care Africa, Dr André Hattingh, said the only way to keep a good surgeon here is to give him the facility in which to work.
“We came together as the community of Mpumalanga. We painted the place and fixed the toilets, and the locals did the artwork and donated some furniture.
“This is not the end of the story, but the beginning, because we have to have sustainability.”