Children with congenital heart diseases to benefit from new program

The Shanghai Charity Foundation and the Shanghai Children's Medical Center affiliated to Shanghai Jiao Tong University on Tuesday jointly launched the Cardio Care program to help improve the outcomes for children who undergo congenital heart disease treatment in some under-resourced areas in western China.

"Most congenital heart disease patients will recover with early diagnosis and timely treatment. However, some young patients in under-resourced areas could miss the best window of opportunity for treatment due to inadequate healthcare resources and low awareness of the disease," said Liu Yanliang, a pediatric cardiologist with SCMC.

The program will involve a volunteer group of medical staff from SCMC traveling to these areas to provide free screening services. Children diagnosed with severe heart conditions will then be transferred to the center for further treatment.

Initiated by healthcare company Abbott, the Cardio Care program will also include training sessions for local medical professionals that would equip them with more knowledge of treatment and recovery for congenital heart disease. Volunteers from Abbott will support SCMC in the rehabilitation of patients and help improve their quality of life.

Abbott also made a donation of 450,000 yuan ($62,620) along with 100,000 yuan worth of medical equipment to the program on Tuesday. The donation will fund disease screening, treatment and training sessions by medical professionals who work at grass-roots medical institutions.

"We expect the Cardio Care program to further improve people's awareness of congenital heart disease. Timely treatment of such conditions is very critical to improving outcomes," said Rex Liu, general manager of Abbott Structural Heart China.

"Hopefully, this program will help more children in remote areas be diagnosed and treated in a timely manner so that they could live a healthy and fuller life."

From 2015 to 2019, 4.905 percent of newborns in China were found to have congenital heart disease, a significant rise from the 0.201 percent from 1980 to 1984.