By Caroline Rwenji

For the past 17 years, Freshia Wacheke has lived a bubbling normal life, achieving various milestones with ease, and doing what children her age do.

And this is why she was shocked to discover she was born with an abnormal condition. A congenital heart disorder that threatened to tear her life apart.

The Form Four student at Mahiga Girls High School was busy doing her cleaning on a Saturday in October last year when she suffered chest pains.

The chest pains, she narrates, worsened and she started wheezing. Within an hour, she was bleeding from the mouth.

“I was rushed to the Nyeri Provincial General Hospital where I was given painkillers and later referred to a hospital in Thika to have my chest scanned. I was then sent to Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH),” she says.

At KNH, she met cardiologist Naomi Gachara and found out she had a heart defect, a condition she was apparently born with. Freshia was shocked, scared and worried about the implications of the diagnosis, but Dr Gachara helped her through the procedure.

Expensive venture

She underwent an open-heart surgery last Saturday, being part of 21 other children who underwent the surgery at the referral hospital.

The Head of Department at the Cardiology Centre at KNH Dr James Munene said all the patients have been operated at an unbelievable cost of Sh30,000.

The surgeries, he said, usually cost between Sh100, 000 to Sh300, 000 at the referral hospital, and Sh800,000 and above in private hospitals.

The paediatric surgeries are a joint venture between the hospital and the Pablo Horstmann Foundation, a Spanish cardiology team based in Lamu where 22 children will receive the surgery this week. KNH usually conducts four such surgeries weekly. Most beneficiaries are children aged a year and below who need the surgery before the condition becomes inoperable.

Hospital records indicate there were 362 new paediatric cases in the outpatient cardiac surgical clinics and 911 revisits last year.

Adult cases recorded were 723 new patients and 1, 744 revisits at the outpatient surgical cardiology clinics. Only two days after the surgery, Freshia looked cheerful and could easily move around. She happily explained how she could now breathe easy, adding she is can tell the difference after the surgery.

She pointed out that her childhood was normal, apart from fatigue and breathlessness when she was young. However, at age 12, she started having chest pains but they were not as severe.

“She would at times cough and complain of chest pain and we rushed to the chemist to buy over the counter medication,” her aunt Eunice Nyambura said. Freshia, Dr Gachara said, is one of the rare cases that get to that age with a defective heart. Many children, she said, are found to have the congenital condition when younger.

“The issue become evident as they grow. They tire easily when they are playing and sweat profusely, are constantly out of breath and have a low birth weight,” the doctor said.

Most of these children, she added, when taken to clinics, they are usually diagnosed with diseases like pneumonia and other chest ailments. Most of them, she added, once admitted, are then found to have a congenital heart.

Dr Munene noted though precaution can be taken by the mother to give birth to a normal child, and that eight in 1,000 live births will have a birth defect.

Other risk factors such as alcohol, smoking, over the counter medication and exposure to radiation should be avoided.

Remarkable change

Maternal factors should also be considered, for instance, a woman with diabetes who wishes to have a child should have the disease managed before conception.

The open-heart surgery can take between 3 to 5 hours with a team of six medics working on the patient.

After the surgery, a remarkable change can be observed on the patients as they become very active, tirelessly playing around.

“They are usually released in five or six days with follow up outpatient clinics and medication for 3 months only. Ninety per cent of the patients recover fully,” she said.

For Freshia, she will be out by the end of the week to prepare for her KCSE exams at the end of the year.