Mombasa governor Abdulswamad Nassir on Monday officially opened the Free Heart Surgery Medical Camp at the Coast General Teaching and Referral Hospital.

The camp is being conducted by the county government through the hospital in partnership with the Sharjah Charity International organization.

Speaking during a tour of the Mombasa Cath Lab and the hospital main theatre, Governor Nassir said that the camp was a relief to the many vulnerable families who cannot afford the procedure.

“The procedure is very expensive, one may require about Sh1.5 million to cover the costs and would probably have to go to India,” said Nassir.

The governor lauded the partnership as he reiterated his government’s commitment to improving healthcare services in the county.

 “We are happy for the partnership that will see needy cases benefit from the surgeries at no cost,” he said.

Speaking at the event, Sharja Chief Executive Officer Abdulhalim Saleh said that the process of identifying the 60 beneficiaries began four months ago through medical outreaches conducted in the six counties of the region.

“The patients were all picked from the outreaches we conducted in Kilifi, Kwale, Lamu, Mombasa, Tana River and Taita Taveta counties. The procedure began about four months ago before we picked the cases to work on,” he said.

Saleh raised concern over the increasing numbers of cardiovascular related cases that remained unnoticed which he said continue to put the lives of many especially children at risk.

“We are going to sit down with the hospital’s management and see how best to address these challenges. From what we discovered through the outreaches, we have sent proposals to more donors to see how we can work together,” he said.

He said that for the camp, they had brought in 14 specialist doctors from United Arab Emirates and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Others we coming from Jordan, Egypt and the Netherlands who will conduct both open and closed heart surgeries.

Coast General Chief Executive Officer Dr. Iqbal Khandwalla, lauded the launch of the camp saying that the hospital was among the only two public hospitals in the country with the ability to carry out the heart procedures.

He said that one of the aims of having the camp was to ensure that heart surgery cases could be bale to be done locally.

Khandwalla also said that the camp was also meant to train the hospital staff so that soon they will be able to operate on the cases on their own,

“The essence of the camp was to ensure that we are able to do cases that could not have been done locally and would require one to go to higher centers in Nairobi or travel to India,” he said.

“We are working together with the hospital’s board, to position the hospital as a centralized center for cardiac and cancer cases through minimal access surgeries,” he added.