Five Life Changing Heart Surgeries Through Gift of Life

Five Belizean children are heading home with healthier hearts and a new lease on life. Through the Rotary Club of Belize’s Gift of Life project, an international team of pediatric heart specialists joined local medical professionals at the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital to perform life-changing procedures that many families could not otherwise afford. Before departing Belize today, Pediatric Cardiologist Jeff Delaney told us the mission is about more than saving young lives. He says it is also helping build local expertise, ensuring more Belizean children can receive specialized cardiac care closer to home in the years ahead.

 

Jeff Delaney, Pediatric Cardiologist

“We did five procedures over the course of several days. Beginning on Monday and ending Wednesday morning, we took care of five children locally.”

 

Shane Williams

“How complex were the procedures?”

 

Jeff Delaney

“They’re procedures that at congenital heart centers are done routinely but without that specialized expertise and equipment, they can’t be done locally. So fortunately, all the procedures went really well and all five children had an excellent result. There is not local capacity to do that and if we did not come and do this, the foundations and organizations that help care for these children would have to send them all to surrounding countries or the United States. So by us coming here to do that, it’s a much better use of the same amount of money that can then be used to take care of children that have more complex disease that need open heart surgery or something like that. And so by doing this this way, we make the money go a lot further and we can help significantly more children than if we just waited in the United States for them to arrive.”

 

Shane Williams

“And how does it benefit our local professionals here?”

 

Jeff Delaney

“We have a combined team. So part of the team is the team from Omaha and part of the team are hospital employees at Karl Huesner between anesthesia, Cath lab staff and personnel, and we do all the procedures together. So every time we come down, the local team also is getting much more experience and expertise with doing these procedures, and will be able to grow and expand on what they do.”

 

The Rotary Club of Belize encourages parents with children suffering from heart ailment to contact the organization because expensive, life-saving operations may be available to them free at cost through the Gift of Life Program. Twelve successful CATH Lab Missons to Belize have already been organized, treating fifty-six patients right at the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital.

 

Attention readers: This online newscast is a direct transcript of our evening television broadcast. When speakers use Kriol, we have carefully rendered their words using a standard spelling system.

 

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