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Congenital Heart Disease - Facts and Stats
Posted: 14 Feb 2008 11:52 AM CST
India is a land of wide economic divides. Some are very rich.
Many are very poor. And congenital heart disease makes no
distinction between the two groups.
Most forms of heart birth defects require surgery to correct.
Surgery is expensive, and costs more than $3,000.
Unfortunately, many Indian families with monthly incomes of $100
to $150 cannot even think about affording it.
What’s worse is that congenital heart defects hit young
families. Parents are in their 20’s or early 30’s, with no
financial cushion. They are just starting out in life, when
fate deals them a severe blow.
In contrast, adult heart disease (like coronary artery disease)
affects people in their fifties and beyond. Often these
sufferers have a lifetime of savings to fall back upon to afford
expensive bypass surgery. Children with congenital heart
disease do not have that safety net.
The tragedy is that, if treated by surgery at the right time, a
child with congenital heart disease can often be fully restored
to normal health and have a life expectancy of 70 or 80 years as
a productive citizen.
But if left uncorrected in early childhood, even a simple defect
like a hole in the heart can result in complications (like
increased blood pressure in the lungs) which will shorten
lifespan - and make surgery impossible or very risky at a later
stage.
Three issues need addressing.
* Early detection.
* Prompt referral to medical care.
* Treatment by surgery.
Detection by early infant screening requires vast resources and
networks that often fall within the scope of Government run
programs. But making medical services and surgical care
accessible and affordable to children from poorer sections of
society are areas where the Dr.Mani Children Heart Foundation is
strongly involved.
How big is the problem?
An estimated 8 of every 1,000 children born have some form of
congenital heart disease. With a population of 1.129 billion
and a birth rate of 22.69 per 1000, an estimated 200,000
children with congenital heart defects are born in India EVERY
YEAR.
In the south Indian state of Tamilnadu, with a population of
62.4 million, close to 10,000 children are born every year with
congenital heart defects.
While exact statistics are hard to come by, the total number of
paediatric heart operations performed per year in Tamilnadu is
approximately 1,500. This includes around 700 surgeries done in
public sector hospitals, which are the only resources accessible
to children from economically weak families.
This leaves an ever increasing pool of children with congenital
heart defects awaiting surgery that their families cannot
afford, and the already strained public healthcare services are
unable to deliver.
In private-sector corporate hospitals, congenital heart surgery
costs around $3,750 to $6,500.
By carefully managing costs (without compromising in any way on
high quality equipment and consumable items), and by recruiting
the services of charity-minded professionals who donate their
time for little or no compensation, the Dr.Mani Children Heart
Foundation is able to perform similar operations at a reduced
cost of $2,250.
The solution?
This complex, sticky problem can be addressed by a two-pronged
approach.
1. Create healthcare delivery systems that can deliver high
quality specialised care to under-privileged children with
congenital heart disease, at reasonable cost
2. Develop funding sources to enable these organisations to care
for 500 to 1000 children with CHD every year
The focus of Dr.Mani Children Heart Foundation is to establish
these 2 pillars.
Our team of highly skilled and experienced professionals is
driven by a mission to help poor children with heart defects,
and a dream of expanding to a scale big enough to make a
difference to the large population of CHD victims in India.
But alone, we cannot fund this ambitious project. We need help.
Your help.
Will you help us save the lives of children with congenital
heart defects? |