Date of Birth: March 29, 1999
Date of Catherization: March 6, 2002
Date of Surgery: March 14, 2002
Date of follow up: August 18, 2009
History:
Mkanga arrives at the Wolfson Medical Center through Save a Child's Heart in October 2002, coming from the village of Kinduni. He was almost 3 years old when he arrived. His mother was a farmer, his father was a watchman and he had 4 siblings.
Mkanga suffered from a congenital heart disease - a type of defect or malformation in one or more structures of the heart or blood vessels that occurs before birth. It is responsible for more deaths in the first year of life than any other birth defects.
On March 6th he underwent a catheterization and on March 14th he underwent life saving surgery. A happy and healthy Mkanga returned back to Zanzibar in April 2002.
Mkanga’s medical treatment was sponsored by Kinderhilfe Sansibar, founded Dr. Nicole Haeffner.
Follow up:
Age at follow up: 10 years old
In August 2009, a questionnaire was carried out in Zanzibar by: Save a Child's Heart volunteer from Israel, Netta Beer - a PhD student from Karolinska Institute, doing Malaria research in Zanzibar and working with the ZMCP (Zanzibar Malaria Control Program); Kazija Ali Msaada a nurse from Zanzibar who had accompanied children for their operations to Israel in January 2003; and 2 other local volunteers.
Dr. Omar Suleiman, Director and Coordinator of Pediatric Cardiology at the Mnazi Mmoja hospital, helped with developing the questionnaire and organizing the logistics, whilst the 4 volunteers carried out the questionnaire itself and took current photographs of the children. Their arrival was advertised on the local radio, so that children who were operated on in Israel in the past, knew to come to the hospital for their follow-up and subsequently the questionnaire. They split their week between Mnazi Mmoja hospital in Zanzibar (Unguja Island) and Chake-Chake hospital, in Chake-Chake town.
This was carried ahead of the Save a Child's Heart mission to Zanzibar on September 4th 2009. Headed by Dr. Akiva Tamir, the Head of the Pediatric Cardiology Unit at the Wolfson Medical Center in Holon, Israel, they screened new children in order to decide who will benefit from treatment and come to Israel for life saving cardiac surgery, and they followed-up on children who had been to Save a Child's Heart for surgery in the past.
Current condition:
Mkanga and his father Moh’d give us an update on how he is doing 7 years after his operation. Mkanga is much stronger and more active than before his operation and he doesn’t suffer from rapid heart beats or shortness of breath.
He is now studying in school in grade 2. He attends regularly and is a good student. Afterwards he goes to madrasa, Koran school, and then watches television, plays football and runs around.
Several times a year Mkanga makes the one hour journey back to hospital for a check up.