Gift of Life International to implement a Nurse Education Program

• Engage Sri Lankans to help Sri Lankan doctors to help Sri Lankan children

GOF international in partnership with GOF Sri Lanka will work with the administration of Lady Ridgeway Hospital Colombo to implement a well-structured ‘Advanced Nurses Training Program’ on post-surgical care. The main objective of this move is to empower the nursing professionals at LRH to improve patient outcome. Additionally GOF international will provide support to the Rotarians of Rotary District 3220 in their efforts to raise funds to support heart surgeries for indigent children at LRH. This support will come in the form of coordinating Rotary Global Grants to fund these surgeries. GOFI Executive Director Rob Raylman commented: “Over 17000 children in 67 developing countries have been provided for, so this is a worldwide network we have put together. Since its inception GIFSL have helped 83 children. The importance of today is now we are now looking to increase our capacity to help Sri Lankan capacity.” Raylman went on to say: “The country has one of the largest paediatric cardiothoracic programs in the world, so we are very excited to partner with our rotary partners in Sri Lanka. This program is dedicated to increase amount of children that are treated in yearly basis and improve patient outcomes, we feel we can do that very effectively.” Statistics show that 3,000 children are born each year in Sri Lanka suffering from congenital heart diseases. LRH is the only facility in Sri Lanka that could deal with these cases has an annual capacity of around 1000 surgical interventions ant about 500-600 catheterisations. The focus as on finding an effective way of covering the growing waiting list and minimise the loss of young life. Since the setting up of the cardiology clinic in 1998 up to now LRH has come a long way. “Overall we are targeting around 1500-2000 surgeries a year. This is very costly each surgery costs around Rs. 400,000-600,000 even in the Government hospitals,” said Consultant Paediatric Cardiologist Duminda Samarasinghe. The Ministry of Health accepted the proposal put forward by GOFSL to introduce ‘after hour surgeries’ using the existing facility at LRH. These procedures are done in LRH keeping in mind cost effectiveness with less cost more cases can be undertaken. At the same time quantity is looked at quality is also a primary factor this is where GOLI comes in with their reinforcement equipping the local team with well structured education program tailored to the needs of the local team. GOFSL, an affiliate of GOFI, has been active in the country for 15 years mainly due to the contribution of Jay Liyanage and his wife Theresa, the foundation pillars of this cause. The organisation provides care for the ‘poorest of the poor’ children who could not afford paediatric cardiothoracic surgeries. Pix by Sameera Wijesinghe