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Gallery|Health

Fixing congenital heart disease for Bangladesh’s poor

Bangladesh charities save little hearts by bringing foreign experts to provide free surgeries and train local staff.

Bangladesh Heart surgery /Please Do Not Use
Eight-year-old Mim from Jeshore, Bangladesh lives in a shanti village with her family. The household income is only $2 a day and the family cannot afford the costs of the surgery to fix her congenital heart disease. The family hopes she will be selected to receive free surgery. [Owen Humphreys/Al Jazeera]
By Hannah McNeish
Published On 12 Feb 201612 Feb 2016
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Dhaka, Bangladesh – The cruel irony of congenital heart disease is that it affects people in poor countries most, but requires expensive treatment from highly-skilled and specially trained teams of medics found in wealthy nations.

In Bangladesh, a country just twice the size of Ireland but with more than 156 million people, 35 times its population, there are only a handful of surgeons with the skills to operate on babies or children weighing just a few kilos.

Congenital heart disease affects about nine in every 1,000 babies born in Britain. In Bangladesh, about 25 in every 1,000 babies born at the Combined Military Hospital in the capital Dhaka have heart defects.

Eighty percent of these babies are born to families living below the poverty line. Surgery to fix the problem costs around $2,000 in Bangladesh, and very few paediatric surgeons take on such high-risk cases.

Desperate parents can only appeal in newspapers for help to send their children abroad for treatment, or watch them wither from malnutrition, disease, or die suddenly from heart failure.

Charitable organisations such as Muntada Aid provide some hope. Through its “Little Hearts” project, it brings teams of volunteer cardiac and intensive care medics to countries including Yemen, Tanzania and Sudan.

Around 90 surgeons, cardiologists, anaesthetists, doctors and nurses see as many children as possible during their one or two-week stints. The aim in places like Bangladesh, which Muntada Aid has visited three times since 2013, is to train local staff to handle complex paediatric surgeries and aftercare and save thousands more little hearts. 


READ MORE: Free heart surgery for poor Bangladeshi children 



Bangladesh Heart surgery /Please Do Not Use
Living conditions in the slums of Dhaka are very basic. Many children grow up in huts made of tin sheets. [Owen Humphreys/Al Jazeera]
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Bangladesh Heart surgery /Please Do Not Use
Eighty percent of babies born with congenital heart disease are born to families living below the poverty line. [Owen Humphreys/Al Jazeera]
Bangladesh Heart surgery /Please Do Not Use
Anxoius mothers await the decision of surgeons on whether their children can undergo surgery. [Owen Humphreys/Al Jazeera]
Bangladesh Heart surgery /Please Do Not Use
Rodela is 13 months old. Her mother Halema Begum said the family's income is only $87 a month and they cannot afford to pay for the cost of surgery. [Owen Humphreys/Al Jazeera]
Bangladesh Heart surgery /Please Do Not Use
Mukta from Jeshore prays for her daughter, eight-year-old Mim. The family lives in a shanti village with an income of only $2 a day. [Owen Humphreys/Al Jazeera]
Bangladesh Heart surgery /Please Do Not Use
The 'Little Hearts' initiative by the Muntada Aid charity provides free life-saving heart operations. [Owen Humphreys/Al Jazeera]
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Bangladesh Heart surgery /Please Do Not Use
Dr Shihata (right) and his team carry out open-heart surgery on a child at the military hospital in Dhaka. [Hannah McNeish/Al Jazeera]
Bangladesh Heart surgery /Please Do Not Use
The Little Hearts teams comprising about 90 surgeons, cardiologists, anaesthetists, doctors and nurses see as many children as possible during their one or two-week stints [Owen Humphreys/Al Jazeera]
Bangladesh Heart surgery /Please Do Not Use
The visiting medical teams hope to train up local staff to handle complex paediatric surgeries and aftercare and save thousands more little hearts. [Owen Humphreys/Al Jazeera]


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