RIYADH, 5 December 2002 — While Eid Al-Fitr is celebrated across the Kingdom today, two-month-old Adnan Rafeeque is struggling with life and death at Al-Shomaisi Hospital in Riyadh. He is awaiting a high-cost emergency heart surgery which can bring smiles back on the face of this Indian child. It has however been delayed because of paucity of funds.
Scores of friends and relatives of Adnan’s father, a low-paid salesman working for a private company, are desperately trying to raise the money.
The ailing child, who has been admitted to the Riyadh Medical Complex’s Children’s Hospital, popularly known as Al-Shomaisi Hospital, has no medical insurance coverage. Adnan’s fate will depend on the contributions raised by his well-wishers. His father is running from pillar to post, seeking support to meet the high cost of surgery.
The child suffers from artery blockage, a heart condition which causes inadequate blood flow to the body. “Adnan must undergo the emergency surgery called balloon valvoplasty within a few days,” said doctors attending him.
The doctors said some children are be born with a heart defect, which presents as an abnormal formation of its walls or valves of the blood vessels that enter or leave it.
A heart defect usually causes the blood to flow in an abnormal way, sometimes bypassing the lungs where enrichment with oxygen occurs.
Some heart defects cause severe problems requiring emergency surgical treatment as in the case of Adnan.
According to a medical report released by Dr. M. Al-Monerim and Dr. Abdulrahman Al-Moukirish of Al-Shomaisi Hospital, Adnan is suffering a deformity in the aortic valve. This valve normally consists of three leaves (cusps) that open and close to let blood through. In Adnan’s heart the valve has only two leaves, resulting in a narrower opening that obstructs blood flow.
The child’s father, Mohammed Rafi Alam, has been working in the Kingdom for the last three years. He has already made an appeal to his friends and relatives to help him treat his only child. The Riyadh-based King Fahad National Guard Hospital has been approached to carry out the surgery, once the funds are raised.
