…in quest to save young patients with cardiac ailmentsBy Sharmain GraingerA baby’s cry echoed through the corridor of the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC)’s Paediatric Heart Care Department. I followed the sound and it led to the Department’s Intensive Care Unit (ICU). Behind the still swinging double-door of the ICU was a baby boy being attended to by a nurse.? I later learned he was just about 20 months old.Dr. Rodrigo Soto examines a recovering Tenesha WilsonThis baby, like so many others,China Jersyes Cheap, was born with a heart defect that had left him clinging to life. But the wailing child I heard was in that moment full of life; in pain, but definitely not dying.This was confirmed by Dr. Rodrigo Soto, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the International Children’s Heart Foundation, a not-for-profit organization based in the United States which is fondly referred to as the Baby Heart Foundation. Dr. Soto is a renowned Paediatric Surgeon. Paediatric Surgery is one of the most intricate fortes in the medical field that is not available in Guyana.Dr. Soto has moreover been offering his much needed expertise at the GPHC. On three occasions for this year alone he has been the lead surgeon who conducted successful paediatric open heart surgeries and other procedures. These medical missions came as part of the Foundation’s collaboration with Guyana through the Ministry of Public Health to offer a service that is lacking here.The most recent visit,Cheap Basketball Jerseys, which spanned a period of two weeks, was wrapped up after 17 young patients with cardiac ailments were attended to. The number attended to on two previous occasions amounted in total to just over two dozen. The mortality rate currently stands at zero percent.Among those recovering last week from the most recent bout of surgery was three-year-old Tenesha Wilson. Her mother, Sherry Wilson, told me that she first realized that something was wrong with her daughter when the skin under her finger nails started to take on a bluish shade.The woman who hails from Kwakwani, Region 10, said that her concerns saw her taking her daughter to the Kwakwani Hospital. The child was referred to the Linden Hospital Complex from where she was sent to the GPHC.A visiting Baby Heart Foundation team was able to screen the infant and it was discovered that she had at least three issues with her heart that warranted surgical intervention.“They check her and tell me she got three different heart? complaints – two holes, plus one side chamber small…and it was just worrying to me,” said an emotional Sherry Wilson.But the needed care was readily available to her daughter at the GPHC because of a partnership forged with the Baby Heart Foundation.The woman expressed appreciation that the GPHC had been able to collaborate with the Foundation so that her daughter,Wholesale Jerseys Free Shipping, like so many others, could have access to free surgical intervention that is usually very costly.Sherry Willson for a moment mused over the fact that raising funds for a cardiac operation for her daughter overseas might not have even been possible.Like Sherry Wilson, Leandra Thomas of Eccles, East Bank Demerara, is grateful that the Foundation is helping the GPHC to offer heart surgery for children. She is convinced that the collaboration is nothing less than divine intervention. As she trained her eyes on a teenage boy lying on a bed in the recovery room of the Paediatric Heart Care Unit,Wholesale Jerseys, Thomas threw her hands in the air and visibly mouthed “thank you God; praise God my son is alive”.Thomas first learnt that her son, Jinnear Thomas, had a heart condition in September.? She recounted how the now 15-year-old boy was plagued with what she believed was a common cold. A constant cough persisted, even after she thought the symptoms of the cold had subsided. “He started to get this shortness of breath and couldn’t breathe properly,” Thomas recounted.This happened for a period of about three weeks. But the worst symptom was yet to come. According to Thomas, one Saturday afternoon she returned home to complaints from her son that he was spitting blood.“I took him right away to a doctor (at a private hospital). When the doctor saw him there was no cold, and so the doctor did a heart test,” related Thomas. She said too that the doctor advised her to take her son to the Caribbean Heart Institute situated at the GPHC for further attention. There it was confirmed that her son had a heart complication.And since CHI does not offer paediatric heart care, the Cardiologist there,Wholesale Nike NFL Jerseys, Dr Mahendra Carpen, referred him to the already blooming GPHC’s Paediatric programme.Days be