Operation Open Heart

OOH has started to carry out pacemaker surgery for heart patients.  

They’ve done about 30 pacemaker cases for adults so far this year. The operation is done on a weekly basis with two cases every week.

Pacemakers are electronic devices that stimulate the heart with electrical impulses to maintain or restore a normal heartbeat.

The pacemaker works by delivering electrical impulses to specific areas of heart muscle via electrodes.

The body of the pacemaker is most often implanted under the skin of the patient's left chest.

The funding will go towards training for PNG doctors and nurses in Singapore so that they’ll be able to perform surgery work for the OOP. 

The overseas doctors that come for the OOP do not perform most of the operations but oversee the training of PNG doctors and nurses.

OOH in the past 18 months has seen a doctor return from Singapore as a fully trained cardiothoracic surgeon, two prefusionist nurses and six ICU nurses who go for regular training       

OOH plans to send two more PNG doctors overseas to train next year.

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The Acting Secretary for Education, Dr Uke Kombra has advised that technical problems with the Alesco HRIS have affected the processing of salaries for teachers nationwide and the public servants paid under the Education Payroll.

Little Dalilah Peter recovering after heart surgery

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6.1 million people in Papua New Guinea depend on Agriculture for their livelihood.

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Unlike previous years, open heart surgery was carried out twice a year.

The new program will involve two separate teams from Australia and Singapore.

The Australia team will be operating on children while the team from Singapore will concentrate on adults.

The first operation under the new program took place this week involving  ten children.

The second operations will be carried out on adults in June by the Singapore team.

The heart surgery commenced on Sunday and ended on a high note today at the Port Moresby General Hospital carried out by the Open Heart International (OHI) Australia and local staff.

The 10 children came from Goroka, Mt Hagen, Alotau, Lae and Moresby.

Local cardiothoracic surgeon Dr Noah Tapaua was pleased with the outcome of the six days operation.

Dr Tapaua said the patients are recovering well and have responded well to the treatment following surgery.

He was grateful for the help of the Australia team as they really helped to train the local staff.

The team has been visiting Papua New Guinea for the past 23 years and only recently has extended its program to 18 other countries apart from PNG.

Dr Lee said the program success rate in PNG is high with less than 2 percent mortality rate.

He said the program’s focus now is to assist the local team with training and eventually have lesser medical team members coming to the country to perform the heart surgeries.

Previously a team of up to 60 medical personal would visit the country during the Operation Open Heart programs that normally ran mid-year.

The surgery that would cost up to K300,000 per patient to go abroad is being done in the country at less than K10,000 a patient.

These patients undergoing operation this week are mainly from the rural areas who were screened last year and are only paying K30 hospital fee for the operation.

The team of 19 from Australia are assisting the local 12 team trained cardiac specialists to conduct lifesaving surgeries on children aged 2-11.