The New Indian Express ·
Heart Break
An invisible scourge is haunting India, its dark shadow already beginning to the spread across the most vulnerable of all: children. And the menace is childhood heart disease. One in every 100 babies, or an estimated 2,00,000-2,40,000 children are born with Congenital Heart Disease (CHD) in India each year. Around one-fifth are estimated to have serious defects requiring intervention in the first year of life. An estimated 3.5 million adults are also living with CHD in the country.
But all is not bleak, though the contrast is disheartening. There is Tejbir Singh: a vibrant, energetic two-and-a-half-year-old boy living in Punjab. And there is nine-year-old Suzanne in Imphal. When Tejbir’s mother was 21 weeks pregnant, an ultrasound changed the course of his life. The scan revealed a serious heart abnormality, giving the medical team and the family a critical help in treating CHD: the time to prepare and plan. A stent put in his heart at seven days of age, followed by open-heart surgery after nine months, helped turn a potentially life-threatening diagnosis into a manageable one. Nine-year-old Suzanne was brought to hospital with fever, severe hypertension, and abnormal heartbeats. Tests showed she had an enlarged heart. Since Imphal had no paediatric cardiologist, her family had taken her to Apollo Hospital in Delhi.
She was diagnosed with Takayasu’s arteritis, a rare autoimmune disease that causes blood vessels to narrow. Her blood pressure was dangerously high. “The heart failure was not an isolated heart problem; it was the consequence of different conditions in the body that had driven the child’s blood pressure to dangerous levels,” says Dr Vikas Kohli, Senior Pediatric Cardiologist at Apollo. Suzanne underwent stenting and ballooning procedures in vessels supplying blood to the heart and kidneys, followed by months of hospital care. “Her heart function has improved, her blood pressure medicines have been reduced, and she is taking small but significant steps towards normal life,” says her father, Churchill. He hopes she will soon return to school.
