Child Cardiac Surgery

Location: Antananarivo

Situation:

More than half of Madagascar's 18 million inhabitants live on less than a dollar per day. Despite annual economic growth of six percent and the cancellation of debt in June 2005 by the G8, Madagascans continue to fight for their survival. There is still a lack of awareness about HIV and the number of people infected continues to rise. Respect of human rights is considered to be relatively satisfactory, except in prisons where the situation has been subject to increasing attention from the authorities and development partners.

Activities:

Two cardiac medical teams from Reunion, each composed of two cardiac surgeons, two paediatric cardiologists and one anaesthetist and resuscitation expert, carried out week-long visits. There were four aspects to their activities in 2006:
• Paediatric consultations;
• Closed-heart surgery in Soavinadriana hospital and nine other cases were transferred to F Guyon Hospital in St Denis, Reunion, for open-heart surgery;
• Transfer of skills by training two cardiac surgeons in Reunion and mentoring the local team;
• Collaboration between the MdM teams and Soavinadriana hospital.

Outlook:

MdM plans to continue its activities with other partners so that this work can continue in the long-term.

Project start date: 1994     

End date: on-going