Photo: Courtesy Havana Center of Pediatric Cardiology
William Soler Pediatric Center of Cardiology has just reached its thirty years of foundation. August 26, 1986, this center was opened with the presence of Fidel Castro. This celebration, together with our Commander’s ninety years of age, have been the reason for its workers to reaffirm their compromises with the historic leader of the Revolution, with Raúl Castro, and with the Cuban Health System.
Dr. Eugenio Selan-Housein, director of the center, during the ceremony of celebration of this event, ratified it this way, “Many have been the efforts and lack of sleep to maintain and develop the Center, and the National Cadiopediatric Network; not only from the scientific point of view of relief service, but also in its infrastructure, giving an answer to the health requirements of our people; at the same time, helping many children from brother countries.
Concerning the way the workers of this cardio center have faced these three decades of uninterrupted heroic work, professor Selma-Housein said, “With unity and persistence the Revolution has taught us, together with that of our professors, the cardio center staff, have overcome all hardships, have fought against all kind of sickness, have been standing against the merciless blockade, and have surpassed edifyingly the lack of personnel; as well as, technological challenges.
“My comrades from the cardio center” as Fidel Castro named them, have overcome this challenge – according to the words of the hospital director, thanks to the steady effort of its staff, who are conscious of the need of working with efficiency to develop ourselves even more, and to contribute to make the health system sustainable, in a constant struggle for excellency. Thirty years sowing hopes.
In relation to the successful results, which three decades away from its opening, the hospital exhibits, and details were given in the recent celebration ceremony of this anniversary, “Children mortality in 1982 was 14 out of 1,000 born alive, out of which, three were due to congenital cardiopathy. At present- as children mortality has been reduced to 4, 5, death rate for congenital cardiopathy is 0, 31 out of 1000 born alive.”
Other achievements the workers of the cardio center of the capital exhibit with pride are those which from their creation have been carried out in the center: more than nine-thousand open and closed cardiovascular operations, survival which at the beginning went up to 85, 2 percent, and today is 92%.
They are also impacts in the field of Children Cardiovascular Surgery, carried out in the said scene. In the Hem-hydraulics Department, diagnostic catheterisms are done; likewise, intervening catheterisms; these last ones, represent at present 61 % of the whole, with which the need for surgical treatment is replaced in several diseases.
Annually in the cardio center an average of 15 thousand echocardiograms are done. The diagnosis echocardiograms have simplified the study of many congenital and acquired cardiopathy, which previously called for a catheterism which implies greater risks, while in the rehabilitation center, more than six thousand five hundred patients operated on, have been followed up, and the majority during dozen of years since their operation.
In this way the sacrificed team of this hospital from Havana fulfilled its duty. All those who care for those little patients express they do it with the same love of a child; as they ascertain, “our heart is as old as those loving people.”
Translated by Reinaldo Fernández
