Heart International is the first of its kind advanced heart treatment facility in Fiji.

The facility was officially opened by Attorney General Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum yesterday.

The state of the art and advanced services will provide all the necessary investigations and management in Nadi at a fraction of the cost.

This includes angiograms, angioplasty and stenting and patients don’t have to go overseas anymore.

Cardiologist, Dr Seif El-Jack, says stenting procedures for blockages of heart or coronary vessels is now the standard treatment rather than open heart by-pass operations that you often hear of.

Dr El-Jack says anyone with the slightest to the most advanced or complicated blockages of coronary arteries will be well taken care of in Nadi.

“It’s a complimentary facility to what is available in Fiji. The hope is that what is available in Fiji and hopefully eventually in Lautoka grows and grows and one day it might actually look like this – but the aim of heart international was to develop a world class facility – you can do things in different ways, you can do it with whatever means that are available to you – make do, or you could try to make state-of-the-art.”

He says Fijians should be proud of it given that the equipment is the best in the South Pacific and puts Fiji on par with countries such as Australia, New Zealand, USA, Canada, UK and Singapore.

This has the potential of attracting patients from anywhere in the world and is therefore earmarked to attract Medical Tourism.