Andhra Pradesh Governor Surjit Singh Barnala has dedicated to the children of India a Paediatric Heartcare Hospital of the Apollo Group in Hyderabad. A gift to the children of India on World Health Day, the country's first most comprehensive children's heart hospital is a dedicated speciality of international standards with committed doctors, surgeons and nursing staff backed up by the latest equipment and facilities earmarked only for child heart care. The Rs 4 crore hospital is well-equipped to diagnose heart diseases even when the child is in the foetus by using the advanced Echocardiography.
Inaugurating the Apollo Children's Heart Hospital on Sunday evening, the Governor complimented the management for its great foresight in setting up the hospital exclusively to cater to children, the most precious asset of any nation. Appreciating the modern diagnostic facilities available at the hospital, he said, " one ounce of prevention is better than one pound of cure."
The initiative by the Apollo group was a step towards screening children for heart diseases and identifying problems at an early stage to facilitate intervention and recovery of the child. Awareness among the public was minimal and on most occasions even children with high risk of heart disease did not get medical attention till advanced stages of the disease, when it was too late, Barnala said.
The Governor also inaugurated Apollo Children's Heart Trust on the occasion. The single goal of the Trust was to provide financial access to the under-privileged children to quality cardiac care and help them grow up to be healthy citizens. Barnala was happy that the Trust would ensure that those deserving children were not destined to a fruitless existence.
Describing the event as a monumental achievement, Dr Pratap C Reddy, Chairman of the Apollo Group of Hospitals and pioneer in corporate hospitals in the country, said, " We are proud that our healthcare system has demonstrated that we can do what anybody can do in any part of the world, if not better, at affordable cost. It is not Apollo alone, a number of hospitals across the country are doing an extremely wonderful work in healthcare."
He said the Apollo group had performed 48,000 heart surgeries with 98 % success rate at an average cost of $ 3,000 as against $ 30,000 in the western countries. He said the state-of-the-art infrastructure at Apollo could be compared to any best hospital in the world. Started almost two decades ago, the hospital was now serving the sub-continent, South Asia and West Asia from 40 destinations and had treated about 10 million patients.
Dr Pratap Reddy called upon the assembled medical fraternity the need to pursue research and development in healthcare and access to information technology for the latest development in the medical field.
Dr Sangita Reddy, Managing Director, the brain behind Apollo Children's Heart Hospital, said, "We are one more step closer to the dream of Apollo's founder, Dr Pratap C Reddy, of establishing a Paediatric Hospital of international standards in the country. She said around 1.5 lakh children with congenital heart defects were deprived of proper care and less than 2 per cent of those requiring care were fortunate enough to get access to minimal treatment. She said the new hospital had got a rare combination of a well-known consultant cardiac surgeon Dr K S Murthy and consltant paediatric cardiologist Dr Prasad Reddy. Dr Murthy, after his return from New Zealand, was working in Madras Mission Hospital, and had performed more than 4,000 congenital heart operations so far.
Almost one in every 125 babies unfortunately suffers from congenital heart diseases. A congenital heart disease is an abnormality that is present from birth. There are different kinds of heart abnormalities. Some babies may have one, while others may have a combination of two or more. Usually, most of the abnormalities are detected in the first few months of the child's birth, but sometimes the abnormalities go unnoticed. Apollo can detect a heart disorder even in a five-month-old foetus.
Most congenital diseases occur because the heart or its valves and vessels are not properly formed, or a part of them is missing, leading to holes in the heart. The disease can also occur when the rhythm of the heart is disturbed or the pumping action of the heart is defective.
Though the condition may sometimes be silent, following are some of the symptoms:
Some children with heart conditions have a bluish skin tone, what is popularly known as Blue Baby disease. This 'Cyanosis' occurs because of mixing of pure and impure blood due to holes in the heart.
Some children with heart conditions tend to tire more easily than normal children and get breathlessness. Some children get dizziness and faint. This can happen because of change's in the child's heart rhythm or by an obstruction in the flow of blood from the heart to the main arteries. Noise of turbulence, or heart murmers, created by the flow of blood in the heart through the valves into the arteries is often clearly heard with the aid of a stethescope.
Heart problems in some children become irreversible as they grow. Children with birth defects in the heart can be cured totally if they are detected and operated early. The best time to detect and cure the disease is when they are a few months old.
Apollo Hospital Executive Director Preeta Reddy, Cardiothoracic surgeon Dr Vijay Dixit. Apollo MedVarsity Vice-Chancellor Dr S S Reddy also spoke on the occasion. Dr K S Murthy and Dr Prasad Reddy were also introduced to the gathering.