Supporting surgeries for children with Congenital Heart Disease

In partnership with G. Kuppuswamy Naidu Memorial Hospital (GKNMH)

India has the world’s largest number of children with Congenital Heart Disease (CHD). The incidence of CHD worldwide is 9 per 1000 live births. In India, with over 25 million babies born annually, between 2 - 2.5 lakh babies are diagnosed with CHD. Over 70,000 of these children are critically ill and to survive, require medical intervention within the first year. There are only about 60 hospitals throughout the country equipped to deal with this specific medical problem in children and around 27,000 open heart surgeries are performed every year, which is not enough to meet the medical treatment of a large number of children and they unfortunately pass away due to lack of such treatment.

 

The G. Kuppuswamy Naidu Memorial Hospital (GKNMH) in Coimbatore is a not for profit hospital which has performed 2600+ open heart surgeries till date with a success rate of 99% including surgeries for neonates and infants. GKNMH is the only hospital in India which performs Ozaki procedures on children, by which method the heart valve of the child is recreated using the child’s own tissues thereby avoiding the use of an artificial external valve and reduces the cost of treatment.

 

Project Healing Tiny Hearts has been initiated by the Hospital to facilitate the medical treatment of lesser privileged children in the age group of 0-18 years suffering from critical CHD and requiring life-saving intervention. Arcil has supported critical surgeries of 3 infants aged between 2 months to 2 years under this Project. All the surgeries were successful and the Hospital has offered a grateful thanks to Arcil for its timely intervention to save these infants.