BUGANDO Referral Hospital plans to establish a heart foundation, which will help the hospital to incur both medical supplies and the trainings of the experts.
The plan is aimed at providing medical
care to people who are suffering from heart disease but are not able to
pay treatment costs and at the same time rendering it unnecessary to
them abroad for such service.
Head of Cardiothoracic Surgery at the
Bugando Hospital, Professor William Mahalu, said here over the weekend
during the commemoration of World Heart Day, which was held at the BMC
Grounds and preceded by a procession of BMC workers.
The commemoration was officiated by the
Ilemela District Commissioner, Dr Leonard Masale, on behalf of Mwanza
Regional Commissioner (RC), Mr John Mongela, and attended by Mwanza
residents and Bugando staff.
Heart or cardiovascular disease
generally refers to a condition that involves narrowing or blockage of
blood vessels that can lead to a heart attack, chest pain or stroke.
Prof Mahalu, who also doubled as the
Chair of the Board of Directors of the Jakaya Kikwete Cardiac Institute
(JKCI), said the establishment of the foundation will enable the
cardiothoracic surgery department to provide treatment for the
condition.
According to him, the funds from the
foundation will be used to build capacity of cardiology services;
training of personnel, buying of special equipment and pay for the cost
of some of the operations.
He urged Tanzanians to replenish their
hearts with balanced diet, work, exercise and avoiding smoke for the
welfare of their lives. The motto for this year’s commemoration was
“Power your life” by replenishing your body with balanced diet and avoid
to smoke.
He said his institution has set a goal
of reducing deaths from heart disease by 25 per cent by 2025 and it has
commemorated the day for making medical check-up to 500 people, of whom
70 were children, where 12 children and 48 adults have been found with
heart disease.
“We have advised all of them to come here at our clinics to get treatments,” he said.
He said since the heart surgery services
came into inception and launched by the former Vice-President Dr
Mohamed Gharib Bilal at the hospital in 2013, a total of 152 patients
have undergone successfully heart surgeries.
Despite those achievements, Prof Mahalu
said, his department faced a big shortage of surgery equipment, which
forced some of the patients to be treated at the Jakaya Kikwete Cardiac
Institute (JKCI) and others sent abroad.
“We do not have sufficient human
resources here, a situation that leads to making one surgery per week,
and the cost of a surgery is too expensive, with the average single
operation costs 6m/- “, he said.
On his part, the Bugando Referral
Hospital’s Acting Director, Dr Alphonce Chandika, asked the government
to give priority to treatment of noncommunicable disease such as heart
disease. “I ask the government to build for us sufficient capacity to
treat heart diseases,” he said.
On his part, a Kiloleli resident in
Ilemela Municipality, Mr Noah Nicodemus (55), has asked the government
to improve the Cardiothoracic Surgery Department so that it can provide
medical care to people who cannot afford treatment costs.
He said that at the same function when
he was giving a testimony of how he received treatment for the disease
in the hospital, leading to his recovery, where he was admitted to the
hospital for the first time in 2009.
He noted that the hospital has experts
who specialise in the treatment of the disease and that despite their
singularity, they were doing service to heart patients.
“I urge the government to improve
medical care for the heart patients, because in this era of science and
technology, cardiac surgery can be done much better to help patients to
get clinical care whilst they are at home,” he observed
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