Budget cuts threaten heart surgery

Of the 90 000 operations needed, just over 25 000 were performed because of budget cuts

Doctors at the Chris Barnard Cardiac Unit at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town have warned that continued budget cuts to teaching hospitals threaten the country's ability to produce doctors able to specialise in the area of heart diseases and transplants.

A conference on future challenges for heart surgery is underway at Groote Schuur, marking the 40th anniversary of the world's first heart transplant which took place at the hospital in 1967. The meeting also heard that of the 90 000 heart operations that are needed on the continent each year. Just over 25 000 were being performed due to a shortage of skills and resources with children being the hardest hit by the constraints.

Heart transplantation or cardiac transplantation, is a surgical transplant procedure performed on patients with end-stage heart failure or severe coronary artery disease. The most common procedure is to take a working heart from a recently deceased organ donor and implant it into the patient. The patient's own heart may either be removed or, less commonly, left in to support the donor heart.

Critical mass
Peter Zilla, from Groote Schuur Hospital's Chris Barnard Cardiac Unit, says: "The tertiary institutions have been dramatically cut in critical mass and still find determined people remaining. There is no lack in professionalism, what lacks is the basis on which these professionals can stand, who spend most of the day fighting administrations to be allowed to work."

Zilla's sentiments were also echoed by his colleague in the study and research of heart diseases. Professor Johan Brink from the Chris Barnard Cardiac Unit, says: "We are looked at by the rest of Africa as being a potential resource for them in terms of training and developing cardiac resources for them but unfortunately the political will to maintain our health care institutions and our academic hospitals at first world standards is lacking at the moment."