Shal­iza Has­sanali

Pae­di­atric car­di­ol­o­gist Dr Di­ane Alexan­der is ap­peal­ing to Gift of Life In­ter­na­tion­al (GOLI) ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor, Rob Rayl­man, to help save the lives of T&T's heart pa­tients, who are re­fused visas and re­ject­ed by hos­pi­tals abroad. Alexan­der made the call to Rayl­man as he briefly toured the Wendy Fitzwilliam Pae­di­atric Hos­pi­tal heart clin­ic on Fri­day. Gift of Life (GOL) of­fers free med­ical ser­vices pri­mar­i­ly to chil­dren suf­fer­ing with heart de­fects and sim­i­lar or al­lied ail­ments.

So far, 10,000-plus re­cip­i­ents across the globe have ben­e­fit­ed from the pro­gramme, which be­gan as a project of the Man­has­set Ro­tary Club, New York, in 1975. In the pres­ence of clin­i­cal head of the pae­di­atric clin­ic of the NCRHA, Dr Beni Balka­ran, and Dr Jen­nifer Solomon, of the Grena­da Heart Foun­da­tion, Alexan­der spoke about pae­di­atric pa­tients hav­ing prob­lems ob­tain­ing visas at T&T's US Em­bassy, es­pe­cial­ly if a par­ent had a crim­i­nal record or was serv­ing time. "The chal­lenge of get­ting a US visa is in­creas­ing," Dr Alexan­der point­ed out. An­oth­er stum­bling block, Alexan­der said T&T en­coun­tered, was the clo­sure of sev­er­al hos­pi­tals in the US, re­sult­ing from the fi­nan­cial crunch. "Hos­pi­tals that used to do Gift of Life cas­es are not tak­ing new pa­tients. So get­ting chil­dren to the States is a grow­ing prob­lem now. "Our goal is to have these op­er­a­tions done lo­cal­ly, so we can save time and mon­ey."

Though the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex start­ed per­form­ing open heart surgery for sim­ple de­fects since 1996, Alexan­der not­ed that the hos­pi­tal de­pend­ed on for­eign ex­per­tise. Alexan­der said one of the hos­pi­tal's aims was to de­vel­op its In­ten­sive Care Unit (ICU) to do com­plex surg­eries: "We have the floor space, but we do not have a pae­di­atric ICU. We have just start­ed do­ing foetal echoes, par­tic­u­lar­ly for our di­a­bet­ic moth­ers, be­cause there is a 15 per cent chance of a di­a­bet­ic moth­er hav­ing a child with a car­diac prob­lem." She said that while the echo equip­ment was in good work­ing or­der, "we were still in the stage of us­ing a video, when oth­ers have gone to CV." She said if the Ro­tary Club got in­volved with the per­mis­sion of the hos­pi­tal, they would be able to do a lot more. Rayl­man, who came to T&T for five days, promised to help in what­ev­er way he could.