Child heart surgeons in short supply

Child heart surgeons in short supply by Opalyn Mok PENANG: The country urgently needs more paediatric heart surgeons as there are only 22 such specialists here at present. Health parliamentary secretary Datuk Lee Kah Choon said there has been an increase in the number of children suffering from heart disease. "Statistics show that about eight to 10 out of every 1,000 children suffer from heart disease and each year, about 1,500 of them need corrective heart surgery," he said. Lee said of the 22 paediatric heart surgeons, seven are in private hospitals, seven in the National Heart Institute, four in Hospital University and four in general hospitals. "This is not enough to meet the high demand and the ministry is doing all it can to produce more of such specialists," he said. But it is not easy to produce specialists as it may take up to 15 years to train a surgeon of any discipline. "We need more doctors to go into subspecialty fields and train for specific disciplines such as heart and brain surgery," he said after visiting several beneficiaries of Operation HeartBeat at Penang Adventist Hospital yesterday morning. He commended the hospital for jointly organising the project with the Wong Keng Fei Fund to benefit poor Malaysian children with heart disease. "Despite our country's lack of paediatric heart surgeons, the standard of our surgeons is very high as many children from other countries have come to Malaysia to undergo corrective heart surgery," he said. Earlier, Lee distributed gifts to five of the six beneficiaries of Operation HeartBeat.