[ Indu Chukhu ]
ITANAGAR, 24 Feb: The Oniya Heart Foundation (OHF), which had provided free screening for congenital heart diseases to children in December last year, has had surgeries done on six children so far.
An OHF team went to Astermedcity Hospital in Kerala on 12 February with child patients suffering from congenital heart diseases for treatment.
The OHF informed that everything went well and its team, along with all the patients, returned to Arunachal Pradesh safely after successful surgeries conducted from January to February. Out of the six patients, surgeries on two were done free of cost, while medical concessions were provided to the four other children, whose treatment required minimum medical charges.
OHF founder and chairperson Nabam Yahi Tad informed that the foundation is named after her seven-year-old daughter Tad Oniya, who was diagnosed with a rare congenital heart defect known as single ventricle when she was just 45 days old. Oniya has since undergone two heart surgeries, the most recent one when she was six years old.
Astermedcity Hospital director Dr Edwin Francis, along with his team had visited RK Mission Hospital here on 13 and 14 December, 2024, during which more than one hundred children underwent heart screening. Dr Edwin detected 34 serious cases, and based on it, the patients will undergo surgeries.
Some of the cases that the children were diagnosed with are large perimembranous ventricular septal defect (VSD), functionally bicuspid aortic valve, RCC prolapse with no aortic regurgitation, moderate to severe tricuspid return oration, and large conoventricular VSD.
Talo Sunya, mother of a four years seven months old girl, expressed gratefulness to the OHF, and said that she could not take her child for treatment outside the state earlier due to financial constraints.
The child was undergoing treatment at a hospital in Itanagar, and Sunya got to know about the foundation through her sister, who saw an update on social media.
“My daughter underwent surgery on 13 February for ventricular septal defect (a hole in the heart), after the screening at RK Mission Hospital,” she said.
The OHF said that it will organise awareness programmes in different districts of the state in the future.
