A senior lecturer at the Department of Surgery, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology School of Medicine and Dentistry, Dr Isaac Okyere wants the government to consider putting congenital heart surgical treatment under the National Health Insurance Scheme.

The cardiac surgeon believes the move will save many affected children.

“I would like to recommend or advocate that the national health Insurance authority consider putting surgical treatment of congenital heart in Ghana on the National insurance so that access to treatment can be improved from the 1%, so the precious lives of our children can be saved,” he said.

The cause of congenital heart disease is generally unknown but attributed to the interplay between some environmental factors and genetics. These environmental risk factors include the presence of some chronic illnesses in the mother such as diabetes mellitus, systemic lupus erythematosus, infections in pregnancy like rubella or the German measles, the use of certain drugs in pregnancy including some herbal preparations.

Smoking and alcohol consumption can also predispose a mother to have a baby with congenital heart disease. Some mothers with some genetic diseases like Down syndrome or trisomy 21 also stand the risk of having babies with congenital heart disease.

According to Professor Frank Edwin, a congenital and pediatric cardiac surgeon and the dean of the Medical School in Ho, 280,000 babies are born with congenital heart disease every year in Africa with less than 1% having the opportunity to receive definitive treatment within one year; most dying before the age of 5 years.

He furthermore states that the five commonest congenital heart diseases in Ghana are the Atrial Septal defect (ASD), Ventricular Septal Defect (VSD), Tetralogy of Fallot (TOF), Patent Ductus Arteriosus (PDA) and Pulmonary Stenosis and these together forms about 75% of all congenital heart diseases in Ghana. Fortunately, these are all amenable to definitive surgical treatment in Ghana but unfortunately, currently at both Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital and the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, prenatal or during pregnancy diagnosis of congenital heart disease services are available. This is when a fetal scan is done at 4^th or 5^th month of pregnancy to diagnose a birth defect.

Medical and Surgical treatments are currently available for congenital heart disease in Ghana. Foremost is at the National Cardiothoracic Centre at Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital as well the new University of Ghana Medical Centre and at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital. Currently the surgical treatment in Ghana of congenital heart disease runs between 10-20,000 dollars in Ghana and globally in the range of 20-100,000 dollars.