Fiji has one of the highest recorded rates of congenital heart disease in children, and over 300 children have benefited from the Gift of Life programme, an initiative by the Sri Sathya Sai Sanjeevani Children's Hospital.
President Ratu Naiqama Lalabalavu has commended the hospital and its Board, who have served thousands of Fijians free of charge, with more than 29,000 heart screenings conducted on children through the hospital’s state-of-the-art Children’s Heart Screening Centre.
He says the fact that these critical heart surgeries and screenings are provided free of charge reflects an extraordinary degree of compassion and service to humanity.
Ratu Naiqama says children from various orphanages, as well as patients from aged-care homes and hundreds of rural and maritime communities, have also been served through the Foundation's medical camps around the nation.
The Chairman of the hospital and Director of the Sai Prema Foundation, Sumeet Tappoo, says they will be celebrating the hospital’s third anniversary this year and the hospital continues to operate without a billing counter, ensuring that all surgeries and procedures are provided entirely free of charge. He says when there is no billing counter, the economics are taken care of, allowing them to simply serve the people.
The hospital has been dubbed as one of the best as it matches the standard of any medical facility in the USA, Singapore, Australia or New Zealand.
It is equipped with state-of-the-art medical facilities, including a catheterization lab, operation theatre, intensive care unit, and pre-operation and post-operation wards, and also features a training centre with advanced technological capabilities for international video conferencing.
