Accra-Ghana, Jan. 22, GNA – Shen Yeng and Shen Yuet Children’s Heart Foundation, a non-governmental organisation, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital (KBTH) to support over 250 children with heart diseases until 2033.
The support is part of the group’s vision to provide hope for children to be better people in the future hence the need to support 25 children yearly with an allocated amount of $6,000 for each child for 10 years.
Speaking at the short ceremony, Mr YC Shen, the Chairman of the Foundation, said the decision to support the kids was based on the high mortality rate associated with heart defects in Ghana.
According to him, his elder son, Mr Shen Yang was a survivor of cardiovascular disease and was quick enough to help when he found out Ghana was a hotspot for such diseases.
” In the case of Ghana, as many as 372 per million of Ghanaian population are affected with the majority losing their lives due to lack of financial access to surgical treatment,” he added.
He said the Foundation would continue to impact the lives of the next generation to curb the rate at which children die of heart diseases.
“We will try in the next 10 to 20 years to continue with the foundation because I have been in Ghana for twenty years and my children will take on from there.”
The chairman said the foundation also had plans of facilitating the training of medical staff and Surgeons to increase the number of Cardiologists in the country.
Dr. Opoku Ware Ampomah, the Chief Executive Officer of KBTH, thanked Shen Yang and Shen Yuet Children’s Heart Foundation for coming on board to support these kids in their time of difficulties.
He urged the foundation that the hospital was going to make sure the money invested would be used to serve its purpose to save lives.
Dr. Kow Entsua-Mensah, a leading Consultant Cardiothoracic Surgeon at the National Cardiothoracic Centre, said “This gesture will give children the opportunity to have their lives back because when you have heart disease, it means it is taking your life bit by bit, so the intervention is going to give their lives back to them.”
In Ghana, cardiovascular diseases are major causes of death and account for as high as one-fifth of all causes of death.
