[Photo: Supplied]

Around 18 children have undergone heart surgeries at the Sri Sathya Sai Sanjeevani Children’s Hospital since Friday.

A 21-member team of surgeons and support medical professionals are here in Fiji from India to operate on children suffering from congenital heart disease.

Hospital Director, Dr Krupali Tappoo, says they intend to undertake around 25 to 30 surgeries in a span of one week.

”Many of these surgeries are open heart surgeries where they actually do have to open up the chest. They empty out the heart from all the blood using a very special machine called the heart-lung machine. They stop the heart and in those 20- 25 minutes they actually repair the lesion which could be a hole in the heart.”

The youngest patient to be operated on was a six-month-old baby, whereas the oldest was a 16-year-old.

The team is from Sai Sanjeevani Hospitals India, brought in by Sai Prema Foundation Fiji as part of the Foundation’s Gift of Life free heart surgery project.