The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Child-friendly ambience at Apollo’s new hospital

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Saturday, Jul 04, 2009
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Child-friendly ambience at Apollo’s new hospital

Special Correspondent

— Photo: K.V. Srinivasan

IN SAFE HANDS: Apollo Hospitals chairman Prathap C. Reddy with the Nigerian child who underwent a critical heart surgery and her mother in Chennai.

CHENNAI: Brightly tinted walls, a teddy bear as mascot, cartoon characters dotting the decor and Pogo as default channel. The new Apollo Children’s Hospital that marks the Group’s foray into tertiary paediatric care represents a major effort to design a child-friendly environment.

And, barely a month on, a team of paediatric cardiologists and nurses at the hospital demonstrated what they were capable of by successfully treating a four-month-old Nigerian baby with a condition called a-v canal defect – two holes in the heart with leaky mitral and tricuspid valves. The baby also had Down’s syndrome.

“The surgery involved closing the holes in the heart and repairing the leaky valve,” said Neville Solomon, paediatric cardiac surgeon.

The pre-surgery investigations involved three-dimensional transoesophageal echo, catheterisation and angiogram, said Muthukumaran, who is among the few paediatric cardiologists in the country to be trained in 3D echo procedures.

“Thank God for everything,” said an emotional mother of Odinakkachukwu, which translates as “In God’s Hands.” On finding the name a tongue-twister, doctors at Apollo had called the baby Naomi.

Responding to the mother’s request that the Apollo Group set up a children’s hospital in Nigeria, Prathap C. Reddy, chairman, said a 100-bed hospital was on-stream in Lagos, and Abuja would be next.

The team also performed complex heart surgery on a Tanzanian baby girl, Abigael. “The passion with which the team at the hospital works is in contrast with the situation back home where I had to wait for two years to get a referral letter from the government hospital,” said that baby’s mother, Stella Ndimubenys.

The Apollo Children’s Hospital exemplifies the tradition of the Group investing in an aspiration of its clinicians, said Preetha Reddy, managing director.

The hospital has three operation theatres, a sunshine ward, private rooms and tastefully done up suites. The speciality units include cardiology, paediatric surgery, urology, neurology-neurosurgery, nephrology, gastroenterology and hemato oncology.

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