A Project of The VinaCapital Foundation and World Heart Foundation

Summary:

The primary mission of World Heart Foundation (WHF) is to decrease the global inequity in the delivery of high-quality health care by improving the access that the underserved have to cardiac surgery. This is also one of the goals of the VinaCapital Foundation (VCF) with regard to the underserved children in Vietnam.

In most developing countries, including Vietnam, we have seen first hand how access to care is limited to those who can pay. Many charity organizations are trying to fill the gaps and help with funding, but reality is that many children with heart disease suffer for life and die in silence, never having a moment's hope of funding for surgery that would have saved their lives.

In all developing countries access is further limited by the lack of qualified primary care physicians who can recognize and care for heart disease. The rural health care centers can do little more than look and send the children home to die. The parents have no money, and no transportation, and therefore no way to get to the hospitals that could care for their children. In Vietnam the long trek to Ho Chi Minh City, Hue, or Hanoi is too far and too expensive for many rural families.

In most developing countries the capacity for caring for children with heart disease is woefully inadequate. The hospitals don't have the intensive care equipment to deal with a crisis. The doctors don't have the knowledge or equipment to deal with the disease or the ability to stabilize and transport to regional heart centers.

In many developing countries the surgical centers are far, far from the patients. The capacity for heart surgery is usually a tiny fraction of the need. The names on the waiting lists for pediatric heart surgeries number in the tens of thousands. Children die every day while their names sit on a list. In Vietnam there are 20,000 children waiting for surgery. The capacity for surgery has grown to 4000 surgeries a year, but that is less than the number of children diagnosed each year.

Many organizations are working to build capacity, most by building new facilities. This is laudable, but it takes on average, three years to develop a major medical center.

We have found that in Vietnam, existing infrastructure and basic knowledge is there, and that by adding to equipment and providing training, we can immediately increase capacity for cardiac care and cardiac surgery.

The Project:

Sharing the Wealth has three major components:

A. Equipment Donations to existing medical programs for:

• Pediatric Intensive Care
• Pediatric Cardiac Surgery

B. Training of local medical professionals with preceptorship visits by exemplary Vietnamese specialists and Western trained medical professionals for:

• Diagnosis, crisis intervention and post-op intensive care
• Surgical procedures including new less invasive procedures, more difficult lesions and care of smaller children

C. Training by leaders in the field of cardiac care via online or teleconferenced regional training conferences, dissemination of training videos and information on the use of online training sites.

The goal in all segments of the program is to increase capacity and improve outcomes for treatment of children with heart disease. However, there is a ripple effect in that all children benefit from the improved capabilities.

• Doctors who train with Western surgeons and specialists improve the quality of care in their facilities exponentially.
• In addition, the exposure to English teaching enables the doctors to read the medical literature with greater comprehension.
• The relationships between Western specialists and their trainees foster collaboration and discussion, even between visits and the doctors often reach out for consultations by email