Angela Nyirenda says she wouldn’t want any mother to go through her own pain of losing a baby at four months to a cardiac condition.
Narrating her experience to stakeholders during the World Heart Day commemoration in Lusaka yesterday, the singer said her baby was born with two holes in the heart.
“My baby was born with two holes in the heart, but fortunately we learnt about it three weeks after he was born. We took him to the hospital after I realised that he was failing to feed and breathe. After undergoing some tests, we were told that the baby had two big holes in the heart,” she said.
Nyirenda said doctors at Levy Mwanawasa Hospital told her that her baby needed an immediate heart surgery.
“I was also told that my baby’s case was not urgent but immediate. So we followed the normal procedure which required us to register our details on the list of heart disease patients who were to be evacuated abroad for advanced treatment,” she calmly narrated.
“That list had over 300 patients, and my son was number 325, meaning there were other people before him and we were told to keep waiting for our turn to be evacuated. So I took my child to another hospital as I had difficulties believing that a baby could be born with a problem like that and I was told the same.”
Nyirenda said she did not have sufficient funds to evacuate her child and that she was forced to keep waiting hopelessly, while seeing her son’s health deteriorate.
“After some time, we were again told that we needed to wait for a certain committee that needed to sit for three months to approve whoever is going and while waiting for that, the baby died,” she said.
“On that Tuesday morning, the baby just started crying, and he was a kind of child who never cried anyhow. We tried to give him some medications we had been given to cool him down but nothing was changing.”
Angela added that in the evening, she decided to take the baby to the hospital, where his temperature worsened, and he eventually died.
“My baby’s temperature rose to 40 degrees. He started fitting and stopped breathing. That is how I lost my baby,” she said. “My concern as a parent is that if only we could have our own hospital that treats heart conditions…We need our own specialised medical staff and machinery that can treat these elements instead of waiting to be evacuated. Out of the list of 300 people, maybe only 10 would be evacuated.”
Angela urged stakeholders to contribute funds that would be targeted towards the construction of a heart diseases hospital in Zambia.
And speaking earlier, Vice-President Dr Guy Scott expressed worry at the brain drain in Zambia’s health sector.
He also emphasised the need to construct more health infrastructure that would accommodate more trained health personnel and attract those serving in other countries back home.
“There was a time when I had a health problem and I was evacuated and admitted to a South African hospital. When I woke up, all I could see were medical personnel from that country, so I asked if they had a Zambian nurse around to be attending to me,” Vice-President Scott said.
“To my surprise, about 20 Zambian nurses were brought to my room and that made me realise the high levels of brain drain going on in our various sectors. Our people are offering their much-needed services in other countries.”
Vice-President Scott also pledged his support towards the construction of an institute for heart diseases that some stakeholders were calling for.
Meanwhile, Zambia Medical Association president Dr Aaron Mujajati said about US$15 million was needed to commence the implementation and construction of the first phase of the Zambia Heart Institution project.
He said another US$5 million would be required in the second phase.
Dr Mujajati added that once established, the institute would be Zambia’s first hospital treating heart ailments.
He said establishing the institution required the participation of all well-meaning Zambians.
“We need about US$20m to start this project both at human resource level, infrastructure level, and therapy level and to raise that kind of money; we need everyone to participate,” Dr Mujatai said.
He observed that the burden of heart and other non-communicable diseases still weighed heavily on the country.
Dr Mujajati also said several people knowingly or unknowingly continued living with various kinds of heart diseases.
This year’s World Heart Day was held under the theme, ‘A healthy heart…a healthy nation’.