H E L P

TWENTY-ONE-MONTH-OLD Kamal Ali has been diagnosed with life-threatening heart defects and is in need of US$60,000 to have surgery abroad.

His father Kameel Sookdeo is appealing to the public for assistance since the family cannot raise the sum alone.

In an interview with Newsday yesterday, Sookdeo said Kamal’s condition was diagnosed at the end of last year by Dr Deborah Ramnath Boynes, a paediatrician at the Arima District Hospital.

Sookdeo and his wife Shaliza, of Quesnel Street in Arima, said they thought their 14-month-old baby had a “virus” when they took him for medical attention last September. He was not eating properly, crying constantly and falling down when he walked. He even turned blue when he cried, the parents said.

“He was not active at all,” Sookdeo said. Boynes gave the parents a referral letter to take Kamal to the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex (EWMSC) for investigation of a heart murmur.

Kamal was admitted to hospital in September. Paediataric consultant cardiologist Dianne Alexander told the family there were two holes in Kamal’s heart, one the size of a ten cent coin, the other as big as a five-cent piece. Tests found transposition of the great arteries (TGA) requiring cardiac catherisation. TGA occurs when two major arteries leaving the heart are connected to the wrong ventricles or lower chambers of the heart. This causes blood containing oxygen from the lungs to be pumped back into the lungs and blood without sufficient oxygen being pumped throughout the body. Patients with TGA require surgery early in life to survive. The consultant paediatrician at EWMSC has recommended that cardiac catherisation be done to treat the TGA.

According to information on the Internet catherisation buys the child more time until surgery can be done.

Kamal was also diagnosed last September with atrial septal defect (an abnormal hole between the two chambers where blood enters the heart) and ventricular septal defect (an abnormal hole between the two ventricles from where blood exits the heart).

Sookdeo (a former worker with TTEC who is collecting disability leave), Shaliza and their four sons are staying with his mother-in-law, he said, after he lost his home and most of his possessions in a family dispute.

He told Newsday yesterday that the family cannot afford the cost of open heart surgery abroad to correct Kamal’s birth defects, which has been estimated at US$60,000.

He said the Social Work Department of the EWMSC has been assisting the family with lobbying financial support and the family has opened a bank account for the funds.