By IANS,
Kuala Lumpur : Seventeen children from Malaysia who underwent heart surgery at a hospital in Bangalore, India, under a special programme have recovered and are doing fine, said Malaysian Health Minister Liow Tiong Lai.
“We are very happy that all the children went through a safe operation and are doing very well,” Liow told reporters Saturday.
Liow said the programme, which saw the children being sent to Bangalore’s Narayana Hrudayalaya Hospital India for affordable treatment for heart disease, would be continued in future too.
The children, aged between nine months and 13 years, were sent to India since their families could not afford medical help in local private hospitals or could not schedule treatment in the limited government hospitals.
For their referral treatment back in Malaysia, Liow said the children would be sent to hospitals close to their homes.
He said the costs of sending the children to the hospital in India was “affordable”, where each surgery was about $3,300 approximately, while another $400 was spent for accommodation and processing of visas.
Malaysia and India have an ongoing programme, not only of medical treatment, but also of medical education under which a large number of Malaysian students graduate from Indian medical colleges and hospitals.