Welcome to Ahmedabad

After a well-deserved rest from the long trip to Ahmedabad, the team headed over to a local shopping mall in tuk-tuk’s to get some presents for the patients.

These toys not only lighten up the children’s faces, they also serve practical purposes. For example, soap bubbles allow the patients to exercise their lungs with deep breaths after surgery.

Ania is in the picture below holding up one of the toys we will gift the children patients during the week, a doctors kit.

In the afternoon, we headed over to the hospital, where we had a briefing with the director, in which the mutual expectations were discussed. As this hospital has a big volume of cases and up to 6 cardiac operating theaters running concurrently, this meeting is particularly important to establish the scope of the Open Heart International (OHI) team’s involvement during our week here.

Later on we did comprehensive round through the ICU. A few of our team have already been here on the first trip that was done to India in 2016, and it was nice to see some people recognize each other.