Children with heart disease on waiting list due to lack of equipment

Children in need of heart surgery at Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH) have been put on a waiting list stretching to 2016 due to lack of equipment at the facility.

The national referral hospital has been facing a shortage of key medical equipment such as valves and oxygenators that approximately 400 children suffering from severe heart conditions require for surgical treatment. The two cost about Sh100,000 and Sh60,000 respectively.

Lily Tare, the KNH Chief Executive Officer (CEO) said that the cases of heart disease in children has been increasing at the hospital yet it lacked enough facilities to adequately take care of them.

“At times we get some of the equipment such as valves but then they run out before we can operate on all children. So we are forced to turn them away,” noted Dr William Okumu, Cardiothoracic Surgeon at KNH.

He added that treatment costs are also an impediment to children afflicted by heart ailments “and so the government needs to look for ways to subsidise or abolish them altogether.”

Whereas private hospitals charge approximately Sh1,000,000 to perform heart surgeries in children, the cost at KNH is about Sh300,000, which the doctor says is still out of reach for most Kenyans.

He noted that even though there are seven cardiothoracic surgeons at KNH who are trained to handle these complex heart procedures in children, their capacity is underutilised due to lack of equipment.

“I haven’t operated on any child for two weeks now. And they are really suffering and wondering why we can’t do anything to ease their pain,” said Dr Okumu yesterday when KNH received a donation of ten Heart Surgery Beds worth Sh3 million from staff of Jubilee Insurance Company.

Ms Tare stated that the easily adjustable beds will offer adequate physical support and comfort to the patients before and after surgery.

To function optimally, the hospital still needs 30 more such beds to adequately cater for the over 200 patients admitted for surgery annually at KNH aged between 2 to 18 years.

Majority of these children suffer from congenital heart disease (emanating from birth defects) as well as Rheumatic Heart Disease arising from untreated sore throat (caused by streptococcus bacteria).