Khartoum heart hospital a beacon of hope in Africa

According to Fabio Turone, writing in The British Medical Journal, the Salam Centre for Cardiac Surgery is providing excellent care for African patients - free of charge.

The hospital opened in April 2007 and since then it has served 7500 patients from 11 African countries, many of whom have benefited from surgery previously unavailable in the region. The centre was set up by the Italian medical relief agency Emergency, with some funding from the Sudan government.

An audit of the hospital's first year activity shows that 7633 outpatients were seen between March 2007 and April 2008, including 3905 cardiac patients, said Enrico Donegani, a cardiac surgeon at the Ospedale Maggiore, the University Hospital in Novara, northern Italy. Dr Donegani performed the first open heart surgery at the Salam centre in April 2007 on a 14 year old girl who needed a valve replacement because of rheumatic fever.

Patients from 11 countries—Sudan, Central African Republic, Congo, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia—were first screened in their country by a team of specialists sent in by Emergency. Altogether 774 patients were admitted for cardiac procedures or surgery at the Salam centre.

Outcome data show a preoperative mortality rate at the hospital of 1.9% (15 deaths out of 774 patients), a 30 day mortality rate of 2.1% (11 deaths out of 525 operations), and a late mortality rate of 2.9% (some of the 514 patients were lost to follow-up).