Posted By Staff Reporter
ABC News Posted 6 August 2012, 18:59 AEST A group of Australian health professionals has arrived in Papua New Guinea to carry out life-saving heart surgery on 50 adults and children. The group is part of a program called Operation Open Heart, which is coordinated from Sydney Adventist Hospital. The 64-person travelling team, made up of cardiologists, surgeons, nurses, pathologists and physiotherapists, is also complemented by local professionals who screen for possible cases around the country, before presenting them to the Australian team. Operation Open Heart program manager, Michael Were, told Radio Australia's Pacific Beat program the aim of the Australian team is really to make themselves redundant.
"As time goes on we believe that they'll be able to do more and more by themselves and we'll be doing less and less." "We're a long way down that track. There are trained surgeons, trained local PNG surgeons already here and they're capable of doing quite a number of the cardiac surgeries by themselves." Mr Were says of the 300 cases that are presented to the Australian team by local doctors, they are only able to operate on about 50. "The need is still a lot greater than the supply that we can provide." Operation Open Heart has been running for 26 years, with the first trip being made in 1986 to Tonga. About six to eight trips are organised every year as part of the program, with this being the 18th trip to Papua New Guinea. Operation Open Heart is also planning trips to Burma, Cambodia, Fiji and Rwanda this year. Comments are closed.
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