News
Cycling for a hearty cause
Jaffna undergraduates are making a fervent appeal to their peers at Peradeniya and Kelaniya Universities to cycle with them for a worthy cause — to raise funds for much-needed open-heart surgery in the North, North Central and Eastern Provinces.
From left: Dr. Chandima Amarasena, Dr. Ravi Perumalpillai and Pratheesh Maheswaran
The pedal-off is scheduled for August 15 from Jaffna, with the first lap being up to Vavuniya, about 140km away, the second lap of about 181 km the following day from Vavuniya to Kurunegala and the third and final lap, covering about 93km on August 17, from Kurunegala to Colombo.
“The cycling team would comprise 60 members or more, with 25 cyclists taking part in any one of the three laps between Jaffna and Colombo,” Jaffna University Lecturer Pratheesh Maheswaran told a media briefing in Colombo on Wednesday.
The ‘cycling for a cause project’ hopes to raise funds for the Oxonian Heart Foundation (OHF), a charity comprising professionals from all communities and headed by Cardiothoracic Surgeon Dr. Ravi Perumalpillai from Oxford. The OHF launched open-heart surgery for the needy at the private Northern Central Hospital in Jaffna on July 6.
The first patient who underwent surgery free of charge under the OHF programme for a closure of a hole in her heart on July 6 was 16-year-old orphan, J. Archana from Trincomalee.
The OHF’s mission is to treat, free of charge, the impoverished and destitute who suffer from heart disease, while supporting the development and delivery of cardiac care to the northern, north central and eastern regions. The total funds required are estimated at US$ two million.On Wednesday, Consultant Cardiothoracic Surgeon, Dr. Chandima Amarasena, attached to the National Hospital in Colombo told journalists that about 5,500 heart operations are performed in Sri Lanka each year, of which 60% are at Government hospitals [NHSL, Kandy and Karapitiya Hospitals, Lady Ridgeway Hospital (LRH) for Children and also the semi-government Sri Jayewardenepura Hospital]. Private hospitals perform the balance 40%. As many as 98% of the heart operations of children are performed at the LRH. However, even the existing cardiothoracic units at these Government hospitals are running with limited facilities.
“There is also a need to set up cardiothoracic units in other major hospitals across the country. But the health service is also facing a dearth of heart surgeons, with only 14 specialists in the State sector,” he said.
Plans are underway to set up units in Kurunegala and Jaffna, according to Dr. Amarasena, but it may take a long time.
Meanwhile, there is a personal commitment on the part of Mr. Maheswaran who is not only mobilising the Jaffna undergraduates to take part in the cycling project but was also on the perfusion team which was an integral part of the group which performed the open-heart surgeries in Jaffna this month.
His father had been prone to regular chest pain in 2004 and had been compelled to travel to Colombo to undergo bypass surgery at a private hospital.
With such surgeries not being available for more than 30 years in Jaffna, those who needed these operations had to come to Government hospitals in Colombo or Kandy or to private sector ones in Colombo.
Although there had been limited open-heart surgery under hypothermic conditions in the late 1970s and early 1980s at the Jaffna Hospital, the operations had ground to a halt with the departure of the then heart surgeon.
“My dad is still alive,” says Mr. Maheswaran explaining, however, that other people in the northern and eastern regions may not have the wherewithal and ability to overcome this life-and-death health matter.
He adds that it was a life-changing operation and his father had to be in Colombo for a month post-operatively, bringing to mind the hardship that the family and the patient would have undergone including financial, language and accommodation issues far away from home.
So they appeal to all the people, young and old, to support the cycling project. (For more details, please e-mail: ohfcycling@gmail.com or check out the Facebook page: Heart to Heart)