IN THE recent past, Zambia has made milestone strides in its voyage to become a regional hub for medical tourism, following successful operations on patients with heart medical issues at the National Heart Hospital in Lusaka.
Previously, Government would spend close to US$1 million annually in expenses to send patients for treatment abroad as there was no capacity to conduct any such surgery, while the burden of heart and other non-communicable diseases still weighed heavily on the country.
Recently, Ministry of Health Permanent Secretary Lackson Kasonka, while officiating at the signing ceremony of a contract between the National Heart Hospital and the Tokushima International Cooperation (TICO) in Lusaka, shared plans to be conducting 50 heart-related surgeries annually.
“Cardiac disease continues to be an enormous source of concern and a lot of our people are affected by congenital heart diseases that require surgical intervention for care,” he said.
“Within our limited resources and capacity, we have only been able to place these patients requiring such surgery on the plane to other countries where such care can be of course given. Given the financial constraints of the country, we cannot provide that kind of treatment to everyone who deserves that kind of care.”
Dr Kasonka added: “As a result, we have observed the enormous inequity of access to care by most of our people, each one of whom deserves the same care. So, it is for that reason that we thought it is important to expand access to care. We need to invite organisations like TICO to partner with us so that we can provide this treatment within the confines of our country.
“… our ambition is that we should be able to reach 50 patients a year, assuming that TICO will continue to receive favourable support from well-wishers in Japan that are providing resources and other materials for making it easy for TICO missions to happen.”
Now, TICO, a Japanese-registered non-governmental organisation, has been around for some time. It registered in 1993 and has been operating various developmental projects in Asia and Africa ever since.
In Zambia, however, the organisation’s engagement dates back to as early as 1997, when it started its Ng’ombe Township Livelihood Improvement project. Since then, it has been assisting with upgrading of community school infrastructures.
Besides that, the organisation has further provided scholarships to Grade Eight and Grade Nine learners at Mwomboshi Elementary School and has additionally deployed ambulances and supported the training of paramedics to deal with injuries caused by road accidents and crimes that occur in Lusaka.
From that time, TICO has also been collaborating with the National Heart Hospital and the University Teaching Hospitals, culminating in not only knowledge transfer but also 26 heart-related operations, 10 of which were open heart surgeries under the cardiovascular surgery technology transfer project.
It is no wonder Dr Kasonka wants the country to double these numbers.
“On top of that, an almost equal number of patients with rheumatic valvular heart disease are waiting for surgery. In addition, the need for treatment of ischemic heart disease and aneurysms is rapidly increasing due to dietary changes and other factors,” shared TICO director Osamu Yoshida.
Mr Yoshida estimates that about 3,000 patients in Zambia are in need of heart surgery each year.
According to National Heart Hospital senior medical superintendent Chabwera Shumba, the partnership has been saving Government huge sums of money on evacuating patients with heart complications abroad on medical bills alone.
Dr Shumba hopes that, with the partnership now ‘cast in stone’, the hospital, which has performed over 100 cardiac operations so far, will be able to conduct even more surgeries locally with the help of TICO.
“We are proud as a hospital that our operations are reducing the cost of flying people out of the country [for specialised medical attention],” Dr Shumba said. “We are now able to have Zambian-led operations through valuable collaborations such as this one.”
Today, Zambian doctors, led by Chileshe Mutema, with close supervision of those from TICO, have been able to efficaciously conduct heart operations on patients admitted to the National Heart Hospital.
TICO is an international charity recognised and sent by the Japanese government to come and help build capacity in their Zambian counterparts in heart surgery.
Japanese Ambassador to Zambia Ryuta Mizuuchi says he is happy that TICO has been contributing to the advancement of Zambia’s medical technology, which has been transferred literally from hand to hand through the many joint surgery operations between the two.
He believes the partnership seeks to achieve a world-class medical treatment service in the field of cardiac surgery at the National Heart Hospital.
“Dispatching long-term experts is by no means easy. Therefore, TICO and the National Heart Hospital will need to develop more sophisticated operation schemes with the support of all stakeholders concerned, including the Ministry of Health,” he said.
While the recent partnership will see experts in each field trained to be able to perform 50 cases per year, by themselves by 2025, and to also build a safe and low cost system, there is need for multiple and adequately staffed such facilities in the country, given the growing population.
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