The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : An initiative that appeals to heart

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Monday, Apr 14, 2008
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

An initiative that appeals to heart

Staff Reporter

— M. KARUNAKARAN.

HEALING HEARTS: Children at the screening camp in Chennai on Sunday.

CHENNAI: When six-year-old Malathi (name changed) was brought to the screening table, no one had the heart to tell her father, a coolie, that she had only a few years to live.

“She should have undergone the surgery before she turned one year. Her heart and lungs are damaged. She is active, plays well but her system will gradually slow down,” explains interventional paediatric cardiologist R. Prem Sekar. “Her parents had taken her to a camp where they had diagnosed her condition as transposition of great arteries with ventricular septal defect, a congenital problem that could have been cured with a surgery. But now she is too old for surgery.”

It order to prevent premature deaths, common among the lower socio-economic groups, Frontier Lifeline organised a heart screening camp in association with Round Table India on Sunday. Congenital heart disease (CHD), found in one among 100 children, manifests as breathing problems while taking feed and poor weight gain. Of the two lakh children born every year with CHD, only five per cent get the medical care they need. At the camp, 35 children underwent various tests and referred for surgery. About 25 children would undergo surgery that would allow them to “grow up and be normal and contribute usefully” to society. CHD can be cured either by open heart surgery or using interventional methods. Open heart surgeries cost around Rs. 1.25 lakh.

On Sunday, Round Table India launched the ‘heart-2-heart’ project with a donation of Rs. 1 lakh. David T. Hopper, Consul-General of the United States of America, and Frontier Lifeline chairman K. M. Cherian inaugurated the camp.

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