Cambodia surgery commences

All the organisations, time, effort and care that has gone into planning OHI’s second trip this year to Cambodia culminated today in our first day of 5 days of paediatric open-heart surgery.

Happily I can report that after a nervous start to the day with set up taking over 3 hours, Ashish, our surgeon, successfully operated on a 12-year-old girl in record time to keep us on track to perform our goal of 15 surgeries this week.

Ashish joined Open Heart International Cambodia for the second time this year. Ashish first volunteered with OHI while he was working in Sydney, it is wonderful that he is still involved now he has returned to his homeland of India. His cool, calm nature is well appreciated in this environment.

The second open-heart surgery was on a 1-year-old girl which also went well which enabled the team to then preforms the third and final surgery for the day on a 3-year-old girl which also ran smoothly.

The whole team was ecstatic! Whilst all of this was happening and the kids were in recovery some of the team were busily packaging up 15 bags of donated toys and clothes for each of the children to receive as they woke up.

Meanwhile the rest of the team worked on entertaining the waiting heart patient children with games, bubble blowing, and arts and crafts with the dual purpose of breaking the ice with the kids and families as well as trying to ease the anxiety of waiting for their surgeries scheduled for later in the week. Many laughs and smiles were had from the kids and the team! It was inspiring to see the kids come out of their shells and to watch them really engage with the team as we played with them for the afternoon.

What an awesome start to our OHI Cambodia week!