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Gone are the days when a heart patient would have to endure 24 hours of air traveling and spend close to $50,000 to get heart bypass surgery in India.

Thanks to Pacific Specialist Healthcare Hospital (PSH), a state-of-the-art 100-bed hospital that has now set up a fully-fledged cardiology department in Legalega, Nadi.

While it took the management of the hospital close to 15 months of meticulous planning and procuring of advanced medical equipment, the entire team at PSH is on cloud nine following their first open heart surgery procedure that was executed successfully in Nadi by a team of experienced cardiology surgeons and specialists on Monday (November 11).

Lautoka grandmother Kusum Lata, 61, of Natabua has entered her name in the history books as the first open-heart surgery patient to undergo the procedure at PSH.

She went through a delicate surgery known as “Coronary Artery Bypass Graft” (CABG) that was carried out by a team of highly trained Cardio-Thoracic specialists.

The team carried out a “triple” graft procedure without any complications and the patient was subsequently discharged on the following Friday – just five days after her operation as she was fit enough and in high spirits to be released.

“I can’t believe that just after five days of having an operation, I am going home to unite with my family,” an excited Ms Lata said during her release on Friday (November 15).

“I wish to thank the management and staff of PSH for taking good care of me and highly recommend them to anyone who is going through the pain that I went through before my successful surgery.”

“Doctors in Lautoka told me that due to my complications, they cannot perform a triple-bypass surgery locally and I was told to raise $50,000 to visit India with an accompanying relative or caretaker.”

“At that point, I had lost all hope but was quickly referred to PSH by a relative. I came and enquired and was told that my timing was just right because the brand-new cardiology department had just been set up, and was now fully functional and ready to roll.”

“I believe it was God’s plans, and I happened to be at the right place at the right time and was so happy to learn that the total cost would be only $12,000 – a fraction of what my family would have spent in India.”

Lata’s daughter-in-law Amrita Devi could not hold back her happiness and thanked everyone involved in making the operation successful.

“On behalf of my family, I wish to thank the entire management and staff of PSH for treating my mother-in-law at such an affordable cost and am so grateful to God for showing us the path leading to this great and modern hospital in Nadi.”

“I am so happy and completely lost of words – thank you once again.”

Former president of Fiji College of General Practitioners (FCGP), Dr Ram Raju said normally it would have taken ten-days for an open-heart surgery patient to be fit enough to go home but Kusum Lata’s surgery was carried out so smoothly that she showed great signs of quick recovery and that enabled the management of PSH to allow an early release.

“I would like to congratulate PSH for conducting the first-ever open-heart surgery for an adult patient at a private facility in Nadi.”

“Coronary Artery Bypass Graft (CABG) is one of the most common heart surgeries for patients who have had heart attacks.”

“CABG already started in Fiji at Colonial War Memorial Hospital (CWM) as well as Lautoka Hospital by a team of cardiac specialists from India and this is the first such case at PSH in Nadi at a modest cost of $12,000.”

Meanwhile, PSH founder and director Parvish Kumar has offered a, “get treated now, pay later”, incentive for patients who are going through difficult financial situations.

“The important thing is to save a precious life, and, in that case, money becomes a secondary matter.”

“Our priority is to save the patient, and we can work out an acceptable plan for them to pay us later in instalments to ease the respective patient’s financial burdens.”

“This will be screened on a case-by-case basis, and we will definitely go out of our way to help patients who genuinely deserve the offer.”