LAHORE, Oct 10: An upward of 850 children with a hole in their hearts, who have been recommended for surgery, can’t be immediately operated upon because the Children’s Hospital — supposedly the largest facility in Punjab to perform the task — lacks the required resources.

The paediatric cardiac surgeons at the hospital say surgery is the only answer to save the lives of these children and the sooner it is conducted, the better. But the harsh reality is that most of them will have to wait for at least two to three years for their turn. It is only in case of a major complication (that could be developed owing to delay) that the child will be operated upon immediately.

The Children’s Hospital paediatrics department, which houses a 20-bed ward, 10-bed ICU and six-bed angiography facility, has to cater to the need of growing number of children suffering from congenital heart defects. These children turn to the hospital from the length and breadth of the country.

What ails the already ailing children most is the unavailability of space as some 60 children have to be accommodated on 20 beds. The department carries out hardly four surgeries of serious nature in a week.

“With this ratio, the backlog of such a large number of children waiting for their turns is hard to clear unless some emergency measures are adopted here as well as at other health facilities,” Children Hospital’s paediatric department head Prof Masood Sadiq told Dawn here on Wednesday.

He said the department had a follow-up of the children waiting for their turns for surgery and also held a meeting on Mondays to decide how many of them required surgery without any delay. “It never happens that a child requiring immediate surgery is not operated upon,” he added.

About 25 such children, aged between one-day and 14 years, are brought to the hospital every week on an average. Of them, 80 per cent are diagnosed for surgery, which means an addition of about 15 to 17 such patients a week to the figure of 850. Fifty per cent of such child patients are under two years of age.

Prof Masood said the Children’s Hospital was the only facility in the country that had this department and unlike others in the province, it did not refuse to accommodate any child suffering from congenital heart defects. He said the department had 300 per cent bed occupancy and to deal with the problem such units should be opened in major hospitals in the country.

He said last year the department had carried out 325 surgeries and over 350 angiographies.

The department, he said, was short of two associate professors (for cardiology and cardiac surgery) and two senior registrars. The new building was being constructed on the hospital premises where more place would be allocated for the purpose, he said, adding that the department was also imparting training to the paediatric surgeons from all over the country.

Paediatric Surgeon Dr Muhammad Asim Khan said the survival rate of the children having a hole in their heart was 90 per cent. He said with diagnosis at an early stage, the malady could be cured through medicines.

Eight out of 1,000 babies are born with structural flaws in their hearts in the country. Some defects are as simple as a small hole between heart chambers that heals (closes) itself. Others are a complex misconfiguration of blood vessels that require phased surgery overtime.