Cape Town - Tygerberg Children’s Hospital is the first hospital in Africa to receive state-of-the-art paediatric bronchoscopy equipment that will assist premature babies from 500g.
The R1-million donation was made by the Blouberg Rotary Club and was handed over to the hospital on Thursday. The equipment included a cryoprobe and ultrafine neonatal bronchoscope, which will assist children who require highly specialised lung surgery and treatment.
The ultrafine neonatal scope will be used for premature babies, while the cryoprobe will be used to improve the diagnostic abilities not only for tuberculosis, but also for malignancy.
Head of Paediatric Pulmonology and Paediatric Intensive Care, Professor Pierre Goussard, said not many people in the world have this equipment and that they are the first in Africa to have it.
“What we do is bronchoscopy, in simple terms, we take a camera and insert it in a child’s lung, so we look in the air pipes, and with that, one can diagnose what is wrong in the air pipes. Some of the conditions we find are ones that babies are born with, and some are ones they acquire during their lives. We work with babies from 500 grams upward, and in these small babies, it’s not possible to use large scopes or adult-sized curves because they can’t go into the airways, and these are the only scopes we can use in these very small babies,” said Goussard.
He added that they are trying to do minimally invasive interventions that will save these children from open lung surgery, and this equipment will come in handy in terms of saving the time they spend at the theatre.
Every year, around 45 000 newborns and children are admitted to Tygerberg Hospital, with 6 500 requiring highly specialised paediatric care in pulmonology, cardiology, neurology and oncology. More than 1 500 children with complicated lung diseases who need surgery are admitted annually, and 2 000 are outpatients.
“This equipment is extremely expensive and not widely available, and the cryoprobe would be Africa’s first in a paediatric setting, as would the ultrasound rival probe sets. We are also the only place in Africa that has access to it. With the help of the Rotary Club, we have First World equipment that we are able to use on our patients,” said Goussard.
Helen Visser from the Rotary Club said the donation of this equipment was made possible by various individuals and organisation from different countries.
“More than 23 years ago, we were planning our 100th year anniversary, and we had to find a project that we could do for three years, and I knew one of the professors here. He asked if we could do something and I came, and I looked, and we eventually decided that we would adopt the TB and neurological wards, and that’s how it all started,” said Visser.
She said ever since then they have always been part of the hospital, especially in Ward G9, the TB and Neurological Ward, where they do regular visits and bring bags with soft toys for the children.
“We are very happy to be part of this; we’ve got a good relationship with the professors here. We like to meet with them, and we always try and find a way to raise money to buy what they need,” said Visser.