Over 400 children diagnosed with various heart conditions at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital, are virtually on a death row because relatives cannot afford the treatment cost.
It costs between $2,000 and $60,000 for surgery, depending on whether the condition is simple or complex.
A cardiovascular and thoracic surgeon, Dr. Isaac Okyere, describes the situation as demoralising for health professionals.
The Heart Clinic at KATH sees, at least, 150 child and adult heart cases a week.
Ghana and Senegal are the only West African countries where open-heart surgery is undertaken on daily basis and there is always a backlog of cases due to high cost.
The situation means patients have no option but painfully await death.
“In Kumasi, we have more than 400 children who need surgery but they cannot afford it. And somebody will progress from it to heart failure which we cannot do surgeries for them. Yes, we have children who are on the waiting list. Absolutely. Some of them have already died. Every year some of them would die,” Dr. Okyere sums up his frustration.
Eighteen-month-old Yussif Kooli Zakariah, the only male child of a mason, Bashir Zakariah, and wife, Suhuriya who sells charcoal at Edumfa in Afigya Kwabre District, is one of them.
He was diagnosed with a complicated congenital heart condition 43-days after birth.
“He has one of the complex heart conditions called Trancus Asteriosus. There’s a big whole in heart either in the upper two chambers or between the lower two chambers. And there is also something going wrong with the main tubes or vessels that blood flows to all parts of the body and then the lung,” says Dr. Okyere.
From a local hospital through Komfo Anokye to Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, Yussif is frequently in and out of the hospital for recurrent heart failure.
His poor parents who live on $9 a day have already spent over GH¢20,000 (about $4,000) through the benevolence of family members and loan the father contracted.
For Mr. Zakariah, there is nothing painful than seeing his only son soaked in uncontrollable pain.
“He doesn’t eat. He doesn’t sleep especially at night. He is always having sweat and always needs to be in cool area before he is okay. You see he feeling hungry but he can’t eat because of the situation. He cries a lot at night. How can you sleep?
But doctors say the only long- term solution is surgical reconstruction of his heart outside Ghana.
“Some of them (children) are kept at the hospital for a long time or some of them will come with recurrent heart failure. This baby has been coming several times for admission because the child has been having heart failure. I was told that he was discharged from Komfo Anokye about a week ago because he presented with heart failure. So they would be coming with recurrent heart failure; so there is cost for recurrent admissions and of course, medications to control the heart failure but these are just medicines, drugs to control the heart failure. They are not managing or treating actual structural abnormality of the heart itself,” Dr. Okyere revealed.
Estimates from a hospital in India sent to the National Cardio Centre at Korle-Bu put the cost at $12,000.
Yussif’s poor parents, obviously, are unable to raise the money. They have come to dead-end.
His father, Bashiru Zakaria has no hope of raising that money.
“I don’t know how to get that kind of money…I can say I have lost hope.”
Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital alone has six Cardiologists and Cardiac Surgeons who work with colleagues at the National Cardio-Thoracic Center in Korle Bu.
Through external collaborations from the US, China and Belgium, the Centre is able to perform surgery for between 10 and 18 patients with simple heart conditions at a cost as low as about $2,000. But many of the patients, including those with complex cases who have to undergo treatment abroad are unable to meet cost.
Dr. Okyere who received further training in India after understudying Ghana’s renowned heart surgeon, Professor Kwabena Frimpong Boateng, described as “extremely sad. He wants children such as Yussif and several others suffering similar fate to be taken care of by the state.
“I think that we should all advocate. We can forget about the adult but for the children, I think there should be a way that even if government takes about 50 per cent, say $3,000, it will help.”
“I think if we take adults and children, I think it is the responsibility of the state to take care of children. Most developed countries or in India, health insurance covers children’s surgery and I think we should do that because most average Ghanaians cannot afford heart surgery for their children,” he stated.
