What We're About.
This April 2009, marking the 15th Anniversary of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, a team of surgeons and clinicians from Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston will take their vacation from work and use it to travel to Kigali, Rwanda, where they will perform a series of life-saving open heart surgeries on patients suffering from severe forms of Rheumatic Heart Disease.
Rheumatic Heart Disease affects some 15.6 million people worldwide, but the large majority of that is found in countries struggling with extreme poverty rates, such as Rwanda. With limited resources to treat RHD in its earliest stage of conception let alone perform the open heart surgery that is needed once RHD reaches its most severe and debilitating stage, the Rwanda Government and Dr. Joseph Mucumbitsi (leading cardiologist of King Faisal Hospital) were faced with the enormous costs of evacuating patients to Sudan for the procedure.
After a huge international effort on the part of an Australian team, a Belgium team, the Rwandan Government, King Faisal Hospital, Partners In Health and the Boston team, Team Heart, progress is now being made on a long-term project developing a cardiac surgery program in Kigali - the first of it's kind in sub-Saharan Africa. It will take an estimated 7-10 years but with the contributions of the visiting clinicians and their sponsors KFH is slowly building up it's facilities and training local Rwandan staff.
"Once you choose hope, anything’s possible."
~ Christopher Reeve
When most people talk of Rwanda, they are filled with images of suffering, hatred, slaughter and loss, of pain and sadness, and images that came out of the horrific 1994 genocide where Hutu clan took to the streets murdering Tsutsi, as well as even moderate Hutu. It was a senseless act that had neighbours killing neighbours for no apparent reason. This brutality, and news coverage of the continuously erupting civil wars along the Rwandan borders has struck fear and judgment into the minds of western people. However, Rwanda is a country in healing, in more than one sense of the word. With acts of compassion, like those made by the volunteers of Team Heart, we help to heal more than just the physical heart. It is the heart of a people that have suffered many years but are trying to encourage new growth of hope.
Saving the lives of 10-12 RHD sufferers is a major ordeal and will require unlimited amounts of energy and dedication from Team Heart members, but it is also undoubtedly true that the patients will not be the only ones whose lives will be changed forever. Going so far from your home and finding yourself face to face with such hope and fear, having your limits tested by an ambitious project and your heart touched by the courage and the stories of people struggling so hard for their own survival, or that of a loved one, Team Heart are about to find out the true meaning of "heart".
It is worth noting, the patients who undergo the intensive open heart surgery will be affected for the rest of their lives, but not just by the positive results allowing them to now do many of the things people with healthy hearts can do, like run 100 meters or dance at their wedding, but the RHD patients must spend the rest of their lives taking medication and due to the nature of the medication, they must also spend the rest of their lives regulating the dosage of that medication. This means continuous follow up care on the part of the clinicians. Luckily, thanks to organizations such as Partners In Health (Inshuti Mu Buzima) this is possible in Rwanda. Without this team of support in follow up care, the life-saving surgeries would be pointless.
