A cardiologist from Australia has performed the first-ever catheter intervention on four children at the Colonial War Memorial Hospital with the assistance of local doctors.
Dr Ben Anderson performed this procedure on children between the age of seven to eight years which is less invasive than traditional surgery as it does not require opening the chest to operate on a patient’s heart.
The team that had done the four surgeries were Dr Anderson, Dr Vijay Kapadia who is originally from Fiji but is now living in Australia along with local cardiologist Dr Shahin Nusair, cardiac physiologist Dr Ambika Nandan and cath nurse Luisa Ana.
Dr Anderson says he tries to provide help to children in each country and he thinks Fiji is unique in the South Pacific as there is a cath lab and the doctors have the ability to do such procedures for children.
Dr Kapadia together with the Rotary Club in Australia and Fiji provided a cath lab for the CWM Hospital from a hospital in Sydney in 2009 and later a second cath lab from Brisbane in 2014.
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