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Sifelani Tsiko Innovations Editor
Zimbabwe cardiac specialists have resumed open-heart surgeries at Parirenyatwa Group of Hospitals in the capital, with nine patients benefitting in the first quarter of the year.
Veteran cardiovascular and thoracic surgeon, Dr Wilfred Muteweye recently told The Herald that his team has recorded steady progress and is optimistic of realising this year’s target of 60 patients.
“For 2024, we started at the end of January. Just this year we have done nine patients so far. Despite some challenges here and there, I am quite optimistic that we may soon be doing two cases per week once we get reliable and consistent supplies,” he said.
“We are building up gradually. We have been doing one open-heart surgery per week for the past few weeks,” said Dr Muteweye.
Zimbabwean cardiac specialists are targeting to perform 60 free open-heart surgeries this year as they scale up efforts to significantly reduce the backlog of people needing treatment.
As of December 2023, the team had conducted 22 open-heart surgeries. Out of this, three patients died while 19 recovered well.
“We currently have three patients at Parirenyatwa Hospital who are recovering from the surgeries. One of them had two valves replaced. She is almost ready for discharge,” Dr Muteweye said.
“Government continues to support us. None of our patients are paying for the surgeries. We are planning to start doing open-heart surgery for children this year, probably by August,” he said.
Zimbabwe resumed open-heart surgery at Parirenyatwa Group of Hospitals last year in June after the service was stopped in 2018.
From that year upto 2023, patients in need of open-heart surgery had to fork out huge sums of money to seek treatment in South Africa, India, Kenya, Italy, Sudan and other countries.
A heart operation in India costs anything between US$8 000 to US$15 000, depending on the complexity of the case.
On the other hand, the surgeries being conducted in Zimbabwe are done free of charge.
The country has between 500 and 600 adult patients with rheumatic heart disease awaiting surgery, while every year about 4 000 children are born with congenital heart deformities that need open-heart surgery.
“We have the capacity to conduct these operations and even more complex heart surgeries. We are gradually building our capacity and our team is becoming more efficient,” Dr Muteweye said.
“The operation times are now shorter, that is the time when the patient is on the operating table. The patient’s average stay in the intensive care unit has also become shorter,” he said.
Zimbabwe has a history of heart operations that dates back to 1959.
The first case of an open-heart surgery in Zimbabwe was reported in 1959 when two surgeons, Dr NJ Micklem and Dr GVS Wright, used external body cooling methods to conduct a successful operation on a 15-year-old boy who had a diseased pulmonary valve.
In the 1970s and 1980s, a philanthropic team from Loma Linda University, United States, visited Zimbabwe and did open heart surgeries.
From 1988 to 1992, a local team of specialists was set up to do operations. The open-heart surgery programme became a permanent feature from 1994, run by Dr David Chimuka and Dr William Mahalu and a few others.
However, the programme ceased in 2003 due to lack of foreign currency to purchase consumables after more than 400 patients had benefited.
According to a report by the World Health Organisation (WHO), cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of death globally, with more than 19 million deaths reported every year.
Globally, heart disease-rElated deaths increased from 12,4 million in 1990 to 19,8 million in 2022.
Health experts say the Asia, Europe, Africa and the Middle East regions are estimated to have the highest burden of deaths due to heart related diseases, with high blood pressure, raised cholesterol, dietary risks and air pollution being the leading causes.
Online Reporter