Duhok: An Italian heart surgery center for the children of Kurdistan

Press release 17.7.2012

The Italian Association Child Heart Diseases in the World (L’associazione Bambini Cardiopatici nel Mondo),  is since 1993 fully committed to combat congenital heart disease, and recently added the Iraqi Kurdistan Region to the long list of countries where it operates. On 18 March, in fact, in Duhok, it has begun to operate the first center specializing in pediatric cardiac surgery.

Congenital heart defects are one of the most common malformations at birth, and the third leading cause of infant death in the world.

According to forecasts, the center will perform 200 operations per year. It already has 5 000 patients scheduled to undergo surgery. For this reason, the efforts by the association are also focused on  the formation in the field of local physicians such as Halkawt Nuri, one of the surgeons who have recently saved Ayleen.

The little girl, just forty days old, was born with a malformation known as transposition of great arteries: the probability that she survived were slim. "It took eight hours to reverse the circulation of blood but the heart of the new-born reacted well," says Alessandro Frigiola, chief of pediatric cardiac surgery clinic in Milan, and founder and president of the association. After ten days, Ayleen was home again.
Stories like this help the Italian public to understand how important the center of Duhok is.

For the occasion a series of video clips was filmed that illustrate both the data on that for the nearly twenty years the association existed, and the details of the last mission in Kurdistan.


It might interest you: http://www.milanotoday.it/un-centro-di-cardiochirurgia-per-i-bambini-del-kurdistan-1485687.html

source: source: www.MilanoToday.it