William 'Bunny Rugs' Clarke (left) of the Jamaica Children Heart Fund looks affectionately at five-month-old Niles Simpson who underwent heart surgery last Thursday night. Holding Niles is Madeline Faisan, an ICU nurse. (Photo: Lionel Rookwood)

FIVE-MONTH-OLD Niles Simpson last week got a new lease on life.

The hole in his heart was corrected by a surgical team from the Joe DiMaggio Children's Hospital (JDCH) in Hollywood, Florida, who also performed open-heart surgery free of charge on five other children at the University Hospital of the West Indies (UHWI).

"We are extremely happy and we are just waiting for him to pull through so we can take him home," Craig Simpson, Niles' father told the Observer last Friday. "This has truly been a blessing. He is a very lively child, but he used to breath heavily and his heart beats very fast."
Niles also has Down Syndrome.

Dr Gerald Lavandosky, paediatric critical care medical director at the Joe DiMaggio Children's Hospital, said the conditions of the children were so serious that the 17-member surgical team, headed by Dr Richard Perryman, director of Cardiothoracic surgery at the JDCH - which performed open heart surgery on 10 children earlier this year - felt compelled to return and lend a helping hand.

"They all would have died. They probably wouldn't have been here next year when we come back. With these particular legions they would have become inoperable and then gradually options levels would become lower and lower and they would have died," Dr Lavandosky said.

"All of the children have holes in their heart between the pumping chambers of their heart; these are called septol defects and they are easily corrected. Dr Perryman placed a patch in that hole to make sure that the blood circulates appropriately between the pumping chambers," Dr Lavandosky said.

He added: "One of the children had a special type of heart defect called tetralogy of fallot where not only was there a hole in the heart, but the main blood vessel leading to the lung was obstructed."

The six little ones who were operated on last week were on a list of more than 300 children in need of heart surgery. Parents of some of the children who were unable to wait their turn had to spend more than $1 million for the surgeries to be done elsewhere, while others who can't afford the high cost may have to wait up to nine years. Others die.

"Many children by the first two months of life develop congestive heart failure where they will have too much fluid in their lungs. They don't grow and develop normally because they are breathing faster most of the time," Dr Lavandosky said. "They can't eat very well on their own so they are not able to get enough nutrition. Their energy levels are poor, they sweat a lot, they breath heavily and then gradually it becomes a vicious cycle," he added.

Meantime, William 'Bunny Rugs' Clarke, the lead singer for the Fab Five band, who also works with the Jamaica Children Heart Fund (JCHF), said more donations were needed to fund more missions to visit Jamaica.

"There are no facilities and that is why they were called on the second trip because of the urgency of this situation.
These children might not have lived if they did not get that attention now," he said. "The organisation really needs funds because the mission would like to do more trips, but it requires funding so we are trying to encourage various organisations and companies to donate. It is cheaper to bring the doctors here than to send one child abroad."

Fifteen children have benefited from open-heart surgeries this year, through the JCHF, bringing to 136 the number of children that have received surgery since the mission began in 1997.

Donations can be made to account number 651031 at the Bank of Nova Scotia, Liguanea branch.

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