Sydney Adventist Hospital's Operation Open Heart visit to Fiji

[Stan]

Patients will benefit

Ioane Burese

Saturday, November 12, 2011

BETWEEN 50 and 60 heart patients will benefit from the Sydney Adventist Hospital's Operation Open Heart visit to Fiji starting next Monday.

A 63-member team of volunteers will be in Suva for two weeks to perform surgery on patients selected Fiji-wide. The patients were screened recently by a team of Australian volunteers who visited Suva, Lautoka and Labasa.

It will be Operation Open Heart's 20th visit to Fiji. Over the years, 606 Fiji citizens have benefited from the program.

The Sydney Adventist Hospital's Operation Open Heart (OOH) provides free life-transforming cardiac surgery to underprivileged men, women and children throughout Australia and the Pacific, South East Asia and various third world countries.

Under the OOH project, cardiac specialists and medical staff volunteer their time and skills and also make financial contributions to the project.

They also either take annual leave or leave without pay to participate in the program.

While in Fiji, the OOH team will run two theatres concurrently, at the Colonial War Memorial Hospital.

As part of Operation Open Heart efforts to be self sufficient, close to four tonnes of specialised cardiac supplies and equipment have already arrived in Fiji.

An innovative feature of Operation Open Heart is the training programs conducted by the visiting teams before, during and after surgery.

Medical staff at the CWM Hospital will not only assist the visiting team but also receive training.

Financial support for the upcoming visit has been provided by Fiji's Ministry of Health, AusAID via the Pacific Island Program which is managed by the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, Australian donors of Operation Open Heart, Heart Kids Australia, the medical supply industry in Australia, Air Pacific through reduced freight charges and the individual volunteers themselves.

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