Ethiopian surgeon Yayu Mekonnen knows that the skills he is learning at Melbourne’s Royal Children’s Hospital will be in urgent demand when he returns to Africa next year.
There are an estimated 420,000 children in Ethiopia under the age of 15 with diagnosed or undiagnosed heart conditions.
“They need this care and they need it desperately,” Dr Mekonnen said.
Dr Mekonnen studied in Ethiopia under one of just two cardiac paediatricians in the country before travelling to Israel with the charity Save a Child’s Heart and then to Melbourne to complete his training.
“(Melbourne has) one of the top-notch cardio surgical units in the world,” he said.
While his mentor helped him decide he wanted to specialise in paediatric cardiac surgery, it wasn’t until Dr Mekonnen went to Israel that he first watched a cardiac surgery being performed.
Save a Child’s Heart has treated almost 5000 children from 57 countries since it was founded in 1995 and was recently awarded the United Nations Population Award for its contribution to humanity.
Read the report by Tessa Ackerman in The Australian.