World-renowned heart surgeon Professor Victor Tsang is insisting that a lot more can be done in Jamaica to bolster health care, specifically as it relates to the treatment of heart conditions in children.

“Baby heart surgery is expensive and requires a lot of resources, and not just human resources. I mean infrastructure resources,” Tsang told the Jamaica Observer on Tuesday during a tour of the Cardiac Centre at Bustamante Hospital for Children in St Andrew.

Tsang, who visits Jamaica often on medical missions with charity organisation Chain of Hope UK to conduct heart surgeries at Bustamante Hospital, will be in the island for a few days doing approximately a dozen heart surgeries on children.

“A charity like ours can support, to a certain extent, but you cannot expect a non-government organisation to support the longevity of a baby heart surgical programme. The Government must prepare to invest. It is not just baby heart surgery. The skill involved in the care of these children — before, during, and after the surgery — is extensive. That skill can be transferred to other areas with the same standard and the same aim for excellence,” he pointed out.

Tsang, who is a senior cardiac surgeon in London at the famous Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, shared that he has been visiting Bustamante Hospital for the past 22 years, helping doctors do heart surgeries on babies.

“The Great Ormond Street Hospital is one of the best children’s hospital in the world. The cardiac programme at that hospital is very well established, extremely well recognised. We have a lot of patients. We are very busy and have a tight schedule, but we also understand that there are many places in the world that have a lot of patients with congenital heart disease but they have very limited access to surgeons,” Tsang told the Observer.

“During my schedule, I may have a week off and the charity would arrange my travel and my accommodation and we would liaise with the doctors at this hospital to tend to patients waiting for surgery,” he pointed out.

“I work very closely with the senior surgeon here, Dr Little. I think there are three very senior cardiologists, amazing cardiologists, and a lot of junior doctors. The key limiting factor is the surgical support, the infrastructure of the hospital to support a cardiac programme because it needs a lot of resources — the nurses, the intensive care unit, the operating room, the heart-lung machine and so forth. I am talking about very challenging surgeries dealing with complex problems,” he said.

“In the vast majority of cases the patients do really well, but in a minority of cases, the patients may not survive. It is very important to have good surgical care to deliver the best surgical results,” Tsang added.

He said most of the children who undergo heart surgeries usually survive, but recalled one unusual case that he did locally that resulted in the patient dying in the long run.

“If it is a first time operation, we tend to get them through, but his case was unusual. This child had a surgery, I think 10 to 15 years ago, and needed more surgery, and at the time of reoperation we couldn’t help him. I think we might have been a bit late in dealing with the residual problem. I hoped we could have been a bit more proactive,” he said.

Emma Scanlan, the chief executive officer of Chain of Hope UK, underscored the importance of partnership in the fight against heart disease in children.

Kingston Freeport Terminal Limited (KFTL) is one such entity that has bought into the call for partnership to save lives.

KFTL recently sponsored a life-saving heart surgery for a child at Bustamante Hospital.

There are also numerous other entities that support the fight against heart disease, among them Gift of Life International, Digicel Foundation, Rotary International, Shaggy Make a Difference Foundation, Congenital Heart Institute of Florida, and the Caribbean Heart Menders Association.