Give your mite and save a life
Tightly clutching a cushion with a bright red heart to her chest, no words are needed, as 16year-old J. Archana smiles mutely. Knowing since 2009 that she had a hole in the heart, she and her paternal grandmother, Nakapillai Gnanasoundarie,
The OHF is registered as a charitable trust in Sri Lanka and a charity company in the United Kingdom.
Please show you have a heart and save a life. Hatton National Bank Plc. Head Office Branch, 479, T.B. Jayah Mawatha, Colombo 10, Sri Lanka.
FOUNDATION
OXONIAN HEART HBLILKLX Amana Bank, 480, Galle Road, Colombo 3, Sri Lanka.
OXONIAN HEART FOUNDATION
010-0170533-001, Swift Code: AMNALKLX HSBC, UK Bank Account, 65 Cornmarket Street, Oxford, OX1 3HY, UK. GB05MIDL40353403859908
MIDLGB2108P OXONIAN HEART FOUNDATION
03859916, Sort Code: 40 35 34 Cheques drawn in favour of the Oxonian Heart Foundation may be sent to: Dr. Ravi Perumalpillai (Chairman), 10/1 No. 4, Alfred House Gdns, Colombo 3, Sri Lanka. Mr. Ananda Atukorala (Treasurer), 42/3, Horton Place, Colombo 7, Sri Lanka. from Alankerni in Kinniya, Trincomalee, were compelled to do nothing due to poverty. They just could not afford the heart operation at a cost of about Rs. 500,000 in Colombo, while accessing a government hospital in the capital also brought with it heavy burdens on this 'single' grandmother who was eking out a living as a labourer.
Last Sunday (July 6), however, her life changed in a way they had never imagined. Archana became the flag-bearer in a quest to introduce open-heart surgery in Jaffna.
The initiation of open-heart surgery using the heart-lung machine for people living in the northern, north-central and eastern areas has been the quest of eminent Heart Surgeon Dr. Ravi Perumalpillai.
Even though open-heart surgery under hypothermic conditions (not using the heart-lung machine) had been available in the 1970s and early 1980s for closure of holes in the heart at the Jaffna Hospital, it had ground to a halt when the then heart surgeon left.
Currently although cardiac interventions are performed at a handful of major hospitals including in recent times at the Jaffna Teaching Hospital, openheart surgeries in the government sector are limited to the National Hospital, the LRH and the semi-state Sri Jayewardenepura Hospital and the Kandy and Karapitiya Teaching Hospitals.
While cardiac interventions (not open-heart surgery) are being carried out at the Jaffna Hospital, in some cases such as bypasses, a limiting factor is that due to device-shortages, the patients would have to buy such devices as stents at a cost of about Rs. 200,000 each, the Sunday Times understands.
Northern, north-central and eastern regions patients who need open-heart surgery, meanwhile, have to come either to Colombo or Kandy. For some surgeries there would be long waiting lists and in others they would also be faced by chal- lenges such as language issues, getting about in Colombo and Kandy and huge costs in finding lodgings if relatives wish to be with the patients. Back home, too, their families' routines would go awry and their own livelihoods would be at stake. So, many decide to live with their heart problems.
Archana orphaned at an early age and being looked after by Gnanasoundarie is just one such person. Working as a labourer on and off, the grandmother had been desperate to get Archana cured. It was to Jaffna that they headed to collect the money, with the grandmother going begging from shop to shop.
"The humiliation was so great that Archana had lamented, ' It would be better if I die'," recalls the grandmother, shedding silent tears.
Fortunately for them someone directed them to a charity and it was then that their path crossed that of Dr. Perumalpillai.
By this time, Dr. Perumalpillai, who had retired from the prestigious John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, England, had already established the Oxonian Heart Foundation (OHF) to help the numerous Archanas who are languishing without open-heart surgery.
Having served as an intern at the Jaffna Hospital back in 197475 and visiting Sri Lanka over the years, both on holiday and on work, bringing teams from Oxford to strengthen best practices in cardiac surgery at the National Hospital and the Sri Jayewardenepura Hospital, Dr. Perumalpillai had realised the dire straits people who required such surgeries were in.
With OHF being set up to support the development and delivery of cardiac care to the northern, north-central and eastern regions of Sri Lanka, its first project is the establishment of cardiac surgery at Jaffna's Northern Central Hospital (NCH) run by Chairman S.P. Samy.
NCH, which functioned as a nursing home during conflictridden times, has now transmogrified into a 60-bed, Rs. 600 million hospital, under Chairman Samy and Director Dr. S. Keshavarajah, committed to meeting the health-care needs, over a broad spectrum of specialties, of the people.
"The NCH has committed its state-of-the-art operating theatres and also four Intensive