Doha, Qatar: Under its medical convoy programme, Qatar Red Crescent Society (QRCS) is carrying out phase four of the “Little Hearts” project in Afghanistan, in partnership with the Afghan Red Crescent Society (ARCS) and Afghanistan’s Ministry of Public Health.
So far, the volunteering medical team from Sidra Medicine has performed diagnostic and therapeutic cardiac catheterizations for 93 boys and girls with congenital heart defects, out of 169 target patients in total.
Headed by Dr. Mohamed Salah Ibrahim, Director of Relief and International Programs Division at QRCS, the delegation comprised Dr. Hesham Al Saloos, Pediatric Cardiac Catheterization Consultant and Head of Cardiology Department at Sidra Medicine, and Aladdin Ali Mohamed, Senior Cardiac Catheterization Technician at Sidra Medicine. The team of QRCS’s representation office in Afghanistan is supervising all administrative and logistical procedures of the project.
With a total budget of $416,616, the project is aimed at (1) reducing morbidity and mortality rates among the population in general, and children in particular, specifically those born with serious heart problems, (2) addressing the too long waiting lists, (3) easing the financial burden on the shoulders of the families of patients, and (4) training the local medical personnel of the host hospital in Kabul.
During their stay in Kabul, the delegation held coordination meetings with senior officials of MoPH and the Public Heart Center at the Children’s Hospital, to assess its capacity, needs, and requirements to perform such medical procedures. Currently, there are no public centres to perform cardiac catheterisations, which are all performed at private-sector hospitals and centres.
Afghanistan remains one of the most crisis-affected countries. According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), it is one of the longest-lasting humanitarian emergency zones in the world, due to prolonged armed conflicts and recurring natural disasters, which caused severe damage to infrastructure.
