A TEAM of Zimbabwean cardiothoracic surgeons together with a visiting team from Egypt have embarked on a week-long congenital cardiac surgery camp for children.
The camp, which started on Monday at Parirenyatwa Group of Hospitals and is being facilitated by the Harare Central Rotarian Club and Gift of Life International, is targeting more than 10 children with different heart conditions.
In an interview, team leader Simulator Machawira, who is also a leading cardiothoracic surgeon in Zimbabwe, said the life-changing operations resumed after a five-year break that saw many patients going to India to seek treatment.
“This is the first camp we are holding for children since July 2018 and it comes on the background of us having recommenced open heart surgery in June 2023,” he said.
“To date, we have operated on 38 patients, mainly adults, who have had dramatic heart disease. We operated on a 12-year-old child who had an atrial septal defect or a congenital heart defect. Now we are operating on the smaller children from one year up to 14 years.”
An atrial septal defect is a birth defect that causes a hole in the wall between the heart’s upper chambers (atria).
Machawira said the majority of the patients were below the age of seven, with most of them suffering from atrial septal defect and ventricular septal defect.
Some beneficiaries, he added, had tetralogy of the fallot, which is a bit more complex.
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“It (camp) helps us in the sense that we get exposure to operating as a team, to operating daily on patients with more complex heart diseases and we also get the benefit of having specialists across the board from the visiting team and there will be transfer of knowledge and skills,” Machawira said.
“This will enable us to continue with procedures on our own. We are aiming at operating on at least two patients a day so we are expecting that by the end of the week we will have operated on at least 10 patients so it might be 10 or more.”
The visiting Egyptian specialists’ team leader Hesham Shawky applauded the Zimbabwean specialists.
“We are starting a long road that needs training, needs experience, needs co-operation between different parts. I think the Zimbabwean team has been very helpful and they are very keen to learn and we are very keen to teach and what I promise is, this will not be the last of our co-operation,” he said.
