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Mamata’s sishu sathi scheme gives fresh lease of life to 4-mth-old

AMRI Hospital at Dhakuria performed the tricky surgery on Rustam Mondal who was brought to the hospital few days ago. His father Liton Mondal is a share cropper at Balurghat in South Dinajpur and his mother Rabeya Khatun is a housewife. Rustam was suffering from a congenital heart defect and had respiratory distress. 

He was also losing weight rapidly. When taken a local doctor in Balurghat, clinical tests diagnosed that there was a hole in the boy’s heart. Later, Rustam’s family took him to AMRI, where Dr Sushmit Bhattacharya, Dr Koushik Mukherjee and their team performed open heart surgery on the baby, who weighed only three and a half kilos. It took around four hours to complete the operation. The doctors successfully operated upon the baby and he has been doing fine.

After coming to power, Banerjee had taken several initiatives to improve health infrastructure in all the state run hospitals and announced various new schemes. The state government introduced Sishu Sathi in August 2013, under which children till the age of twelve with congenital heart defects would be treated free of cost at all governmental hospitals that have paediatric facilities and some other private hospitals. Under this scheme, the operation is absolutely free and the state health department bears the entire expenses of the project.

After the introduction of the scheme, thousands of patients from the rural areas – especially those belonging to the BPL category – have benefitted immensely. All government hospitals, including the SSKM Hospital and some other private hospitals have been performing heart surgeries under the scheme on a regular basis, as a result of which thousands of poor patients have got free treatment.
The state government has tied up with other private hospitals, including RN Tagore International Institute of Cardiac Sciences, BM Birla Heart Research Centre and Durgapur Mission Hospital to reach out to more people. Committees were formed to scrutinize the application forms of patients and determine which children really require heart surgery under this scheme and refer them to the hospitals.
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