Doctors at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) in the Ashanti regional capital, Kumasi together with their counterparts from the Boston Children’s Hospital in the US have successfully completed the first open-heart surgery at the hospital.

The team, led by Ghanaian heart surgeon, Dr Isaac Okyere also operated on seven hole-in-heart children.

Another team led by US-based Ghanaian surgeon Dr Fynn Thompson also conducted successful surgeries on six other children with complex congenital heart problems.

These free heart surgeries have been conducted at the hospital since 2007. So far, 112 people have benefitted from the process that seeks to help the needy in the region.

Dr Okyere told Luv News’ Erastus Asare Donkor that a heart foundation will be set up to mobilise funds for support heart surgeries locally.

He said it also necessary for surgeons in Ghana to be trained in order that they are able to to carry out these surgeries in the country.

“We have to keep on building human capacity. What we want to work on is to get our local people to be trained formally”.

Parents of the children who benefitted from the surgery are full of gratitude for the newly subsidised operation which could have caused them between 50,000 to 100,000 dollars.

the leader of the Boston team Dr Fynn Thompson, hopes KATH’s determination to sustain heart surgery will materialise.

He said “in America these are very expensive operations, they cost anywhere between 50,000 and 100,000 dollars for one operation and it is going to require some combination of philanthropic fund raising, donations...because heart surgery in children is very expensive”, he said.

Dr Thompson said although the Boston Children’s Hospital is always willing to assist KATH in undertaking these operations, the hospital will have to find ways of funding them by themselves in the future.