Andhra Hospitals in association with U.K.-based Healing Little Hearts (HLH) and popular film star Mahesh Babu performed surgeries on 1,000 children of different ages suffering from a wide spectrum of heart ailments free of cost.
Chief of Children’s Services and paediatric intensive-care specialist P.V. Rama Rao told The Hindu that these 1,000 procedures were performed by several teams consisting of specialist doctors and paramedics from all over the world on a voluntary basis over three and half years. Mahesh Babu provided funds for the operations and post-operative care.
Dr. Rama Rao said that meticulous efforts by the paediatric cardiologists, cardiac surgeons and intensive care specialists paid off with a 100% success rate. Every child on whom a procedure was performed recovered, he claimed.
The thousandth child on whom a corrective procedure performed was from Veerannagudem near Gannavaram. The three-year-old child was suffering from the complex Tetralogy of Fallot with the pulmonary valve missing. The specialists closed the large hole in the heart of the child using an artificial pulmonary valve. It was a very complex operation in a child, Dr. Rama Rao said. The figure of 1,000 children was reached in the HLH camp conducted from June 9 to 14.