Dr John Omagino, director Uganda Heart Institute.

About 50 Ugandan children with heart defects will be operated upon soon by the Uganda Heart Institute and about 1,000 will be screened from northern Uganda using part of the 360,401 US dollar grant the institute has received from an international rotary organization Gift of Life and rotary clubs of Mengo and Entebbe.

The executive director of Uganda heart institute, Dr John Omagino, says that the institute has a capacity to operate about 1,000 children every year but conducts only 400 operations because of lack of supplies.

Medics in the theatre at Uganda Heart.

Dr omagino further say that about  16,000 babies  are born  with heart defects  in Uganda  every year, advising  parents to always take their babies for checkups in case they don’t  feed and breath well.

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Doctors at the Institution perform an Operation

Members of Parliament however, raised the issue of working conditions of the health workers at the Uganda Heart Institute.
Jinja East mp Paul Mwiru  said that government needs to address the welfare of the personnel at the Institute.
The Mp for persons with disability Helen Asamo  said that making the Institute autonomous will ease the procurement processes at the Institute.

The Opposition Chief Whip, Hon. Cecilia Ogwal called on government to decentralize the services of the Uganda Heart Institute.
The Minister of Health,  Dr. Elioda Tumwesigye said that the Uganda Heart Institute is one of the most advanced care centres in Africa.

Cases of overwhelming numbers at the Health Institute

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Young heart patient

Experts from school of Kolira Ben Hospital and research institute in India are in Uganda to identify with the assistance of their country representative Munu Kanani medical personnel that would be the first beneficiaries of the exchange program.

Local Heart surgeries are currently very expensive and this partly attributed to low expertise.

Kaluka says the hospital is targeting about 300 Ugandan doctors to be trained free of charge for 20 days in open heart surgery and treatment of heart related diseases.

Manu Kanani is now challenging the government and medical associations to identify the beneficiaries quickly so that the program does not stall.

Uganda boosts up 2 billion shillings heart institute but with the current insufficiency of heart surgeons, the institute doesn’t benefit many Ugandans with many heart patients continuing to trek to India for treatment.

The government of India is also planning to build a referral Hospital for heart related disease in East Africa.

By Mugisa Isaac Mathias

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Speaking to the media, Dr. Omongino said the current funding by the government can only meet about 0.5% of what is required by the
institute.

Young heart patient

He says most of the equipment and drugs required by the institute are of high cost making the services at the institute costly.

Dr. Omongino also added that the funding is also insufficient to provide the necessary equipment for providing heart institute making it hard for the institute to provide some hard tasks like open heart surgery.

He warned that with increase in heart patients, the number of people seeking heart surgery outside the country and those dying heart problems is likely to increase if the institute is not well funded and equipped.

Ultimate Media

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A total of 11 disadvantaged Ugandan heart patients will undergo surgery under the sponsorship of Hwan- Sung Medical Charity Service by the end of this year.

Under its charitable heart surgery program me The programme, Hwan Sung Medical Charity service social responsibility and

The surgeries will be performed during November and December 2010 at the Uganda heart institute at Mulaago hospital by a Ugandan team led by Dr. Mwamu Tom Phillip a cardiac surgeon and Ms. Oketayot Anna Noland, a nursing officer at the Uganda Heart Institute.

Hwan Sung, the Chairman

The Medical Charity has injected 60 million Uganda shillings for these operations for the 11 poorest patients who have been selected among the registered applicants to the Hwan Sung charitable medical programme. According to a statement from Hwan-Sung, The money will also cater for the patients’ medical treatment surgery and their welfare.

Since 2007 the charity has sponsored a total number of 72 heart patients for surgery and this year 18 children and adult have been sponsored here and in Korea to undergo heart surgeries.

The Chairman of the Charity, Sung Hwan Kem, says they hope to sponsor  about 82 heart patients by the end of this year.

The 11 lucky patients are 24 year old Asimwe Ruth, 26 year old Ayuro Lillian, 8 year old Biyinzika Joshua, 42 year old Abesiga Nathan, 18 year old Edonu Raphael and 2 year old Tumusime mariam, 2 year old Namiro Joyee., 6 year old Namazzi Tedy , 1 year old  Katooke Beatrice, 6 year old Mercy Nanunja, and 6 year old  Kabanda Abdul .

Dr Mwamu says that the five will undergo open heart surgery and six will undergo closed surgery.

Dr. Mwamu also says that they hope to operate 10 heart patients at the international hospital in Kampala in December and that they will invite other heart doctors from the United Kingdom to help with the operations.

Dr. Mwamu says that he is also happy that the capacity to diagnose the heart disease in Uganda is improving due to increased awareness from the public which has made many patients to come up early for checkups.

He says that the most type of heart disease is the norm tic heart disease which damages the valves of the heart and it is being caused by the poor housing and ventilations especially in rural areas.

Dr Mwamu told journalists in Kampala that treatment of this disease is also hard because it involves patients receiving artificial valves which have no guarantee of lasting for ever because they can easily be re blocked needing more surgery which is more expensive.

He also says that they hope to improve in the number of patients that are being operated home since the government is extending and building another extension of the Heart Institute which will give them more room and power to operate more heart patients from within Uganda.

Currently 180 patients are operated at the Mulago Heart Institute every year but Dr. Mwamu is hopeful that with more improvement coming they will be able to operate 250 patients every year.

Dr. Mwamu says that the major cause of heart disease in Kampala is due to poor eating habits and bad lifestyles that include smoking eating junky fatty foods less exercise and over consuming of alcohol.

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