Child Heart Foundation Joins Forces with Balakram MCD Hospital, Delhi to Launch Pediatric Cardiac Care Center

New Delhi: Cardiovascular diseases, often linked with adults, also impact a considerable number of children in India, leading to serious health risks and complications. According to the National Library of Medicine, congenital heart disease (CHD) affects 9 out of every 1,000 newborns.

In India, more than 2 Lakh children are born with congenital heart defects every year and a staggering 20% of them require life-saving interventions within the first year of their life. The severity of CHD ranges from mild symptoms that are not noticeable to critical conditions where quick intervention is required.

“Out of 2,00,000 children born with CHD, only 20,000 get operated on for reasons including lack of infrastructure and shortage of pediatric cardiac experts in major hospital chains, lack of awareness in the community, no health insurance for these diseases, and very high treatment costs. This results in higher mortality and morbidity rates among the young population” says Dr. Vikas Kohli, Founder of Child Heart Foundation, India’s first NGO offering free fetal echo screenings. 

Based on a recent CHF survey, the team found that out of 32 MCD hospitals in Delhi, only 3 had echo machines. Hundreds of children were able to get echo appointments and treatment dates after a 6 month to one-year delay in some of the major hospitals. Of all the kids requiring heart surgery, 30% of children need treatment in the first year of birth, which gets defeated by a delay in echo even by a few months.

The Child Heart Foundation inaugurated a state-of-the-art pediatric cardiac center earlier this year at Balakram MCD Hospital in the presence of Mayor Smt. Shelly Oberoi and MLA, TimarpurChild Heart Foundation Joins Forces with Balakram MCD Hospital, Delhi to Launch Pediatric Cardiac Care Center, Shri Dilip Pandey. Since its inception, CHF has been able to screen about several 100 thousand children suspected of having heart disease and helped a few hundred of them with surgical treatment.