Saudi Surgeons Train Indonesian Doctors in Advanced Cardiac Procedures

JAKARTA: A 22-member medical team from Saudi Arabia has been in Indonesia since early May in a bid to capacity build doctors in new techniques in cardiac procedures on adults and children. This is done by the Kingdom’s aid agency; KSrelief, and is run out of the Adam Malik Central General Hospital in Medan in the province of the North Sumatra.

They include; surgeon, specialist nurse, perfusionist, and respiratory therapist from King Faisal Cardiac Center in Jeddah, KSA and King Abdullah International Medical Research Center in Riyadh, KSA. These experts, who are considered to be some of the best Saudi Arabia’s heart surgeons, are contributing to saving the Iraqi lives and to giving an indispensable practicing for Indonesian doctors.

Minister of Health Republik Indonesia, Budi Gunadi Sadikin said, “They will contribute to increasing the quality of the Health Ministry’s hospitals and help speeding up the transfer of knowledge to young Indonesian doctors who will work with them and the international well known doctors, in terms of work discipline, work culture, and interaction with the patients.

Surgery to around 30 patients will be conducted by the Saudi team while on their stay, and all the expenses will be catered for by the program. On this initiative, Indonesia wants to facilitate the progression of the health system transformation agenda of the country and make sure that regional government hospitals do not have to send patients to Jakarta main cardiac centers in order to perform open heart and pediatric heart surgeries on their own.

Heart disease, merely ranked second behind stroke as the major killer in Indonesia, claimed the lives of 250,002 people a year and 6,000 of them are children. It is a great tragedy that many patients never get to see a specialist, who is available typically in the large city hospitals.

The MoH added that the Authority stated some complicated operations, including the replacement of elements of the aorta and aortic valve, were never conducted in North Sumatra before. Dr. Faisal Habib, the head of cardiovascular services at the Medan hospital echoed the view by saying that what they are really gaining from Singapore’s expertise is the current interventional procedures, from the lesser invasive context of heart surgery where surgeons do not entirely open the chest, but work through small openings.

It enhances the business relations between KSA and Indonesia further trying to improve the quality of healthcare services, as well as bringing medical knowledge to areas that lack such opportunities.

Source: Arab News