The Sunday News
Melinda Ncube, Sunday News Reporter
A community-based organisation in Bulawayo, Brave Little Hearts Zimbabwe is set to hold a fundraising dinner at a local hotel on 28 May.
The idea is to raise funds to save lives of children living with congenital heart disease (CHD). The programme is going to be held in conjunction with Junior Chamber International Bulawayo to assist children diagnosed with a heart disease in memory of the late Rudorwashe Grace Moyo (10 months), a daughter of Brave Little Hearts Zimbabwe founding director. Grace suffered late diagnosis and several other challenges before her death.
According to the founding director of Brave Little Hearts Zimbabwe (BLHZ), Ms Tendai Moyo, they are inviting corporate leaders and community stakeholders to partner with them in supporting the children in getting medication, early diagnosis, psychological support and empowerment for communities through various projects and nutritional support.
Ms Moyo said many children with congenital heart disease were in need of life-saving surgeries that were not available locally, costing approximately US$20 000 excluding flights and accommodation overseas, and chances of survival at the age of five years without medical surgery were very limited.
“The greatest challenge is early diagnosis and in most cases when a baby is born with CHD, there is no known reason for it although scientists suggest heart defects can be related to an abnormality in the number of an infant’s chromosomes, single gene defects, or environmental factors. Most of the times nurses and doctors do not thoroughly examine the child when he or she is sick, instead they give us wrong treatment based on their assumptions. This is why we are advocating early diagnosis in all medical centers to conduct pulse oximeter test to the unborn and newly born babies,” said Ms Moyo.
BLHZ aims to create awareness, knowledge and capacitate medical centres to produce educational materials about the disease. The disease can be discovered as early as twenty weeks while the child is in the womb.
“BLHZ’s mission is to share hope and to holistically empower and support families affected by congenital heart disease (CHD), developing and implementing patient cantered care programmes, peer-to-peer support services, education, creating public awareness, advocacy of CHD to policymakers for improved health services and participating in research studies of CHD,” said Moyo.
An investigation by this publication revealed that at least 40 babies from Matabeleland North, South, Midlands and Bulawayo provinces succumbed to heart defects last year and according to a report by the World Health Organization (WHO), one in every 1000 children is born with a CHD. The report says Zimbabwe is among the most affected countries with a record of 200 affected children a year.
Mpilo Central Hospital acting chief executive officer Professor Solwayo Ngwenya said plans were underway to get funding to refurbish a specialist ward for children with heart problems so that when they are admitted to hospital they are isolated because they were at high risks of contracting other diseases.
“The Minister of State (for Bulawayo, Hon Judith Ncube) has been of help as she once wrote a letter to the Ministry of Health and Child Care asking for funds to assist us resuscitate a cardiac surgery at Mpilo, and we have approached a lot of Non-Governmental Organisations and companies to partner us. However, we haven’t gotten any response yet from them,” said Ms Moyo.
