| The Cenhosoa cardiac surgery block. |
The waiting list for patients requiring open heart surgery is long. Many patients have not yet been detected.
Search for cases. Any child living with congenital heart disease in Madagascar will have the chance to be cared for. A screening campaign for heart malformations will be carried out by the Soavinandriana Hospital Center (Cenhosoa), the Ministry of Public Health and the Chaîne de l’Espoir association. “We will go to the provinces to detect children who suffer from this malformation. Most of them do not have the means, even the means of transport to go to a hospital,” said the director general of Cenhosoa, General Willy Ratovondrainy, yesterday.
These children will not necessarily have surgery. The treatment of congenital heart disease is based on several options, depending on the case. This may be medications, open or closed heart surgeries, or lifestyle changes. Moreover, not everyone who needs open heart surgery will be able to be operated on at Cenhosoa, for the moment, despite the launch of this surgery in this hospital. For the next five years, open heart surgery will be limited to one-off missions of four to five per year, with around ten beneficiaries per mission, depending on the objectives. These operations will be co-performed by the team of this military hospital and that of the University Hospital of Reunion Island. The operations scheduled for this rather delicate surgical procedure are only planned in five years. “During these one-off missions, it is the patients already screened, who have not yet benefited from a medical evacuation and whose condition is considered urgent, who will be prioritized,” specifies General Willy Ratovondrainy.
The waiting list is long. Around a hundred children per year are detected with congenital heart disease requiring surgical intervention, according to the report of the Council of Ministers of May 3. More than half of them had to be evacuated abroad because the cardiac operating room was not yet operational. While there are only thirty to forty medical evacuations possible per year.
The cardiac surgery block of this hospital, Cenhosoa, will be inaugurated on May 27. Four open heart operations will be carried out there from May 20 to June 2, to mark its launch. Three more missions are planned before the end of this year.
Miangaly Ralitera
