Praneeta Prakash 
Dr. Kirsten Finucane
A renowned pediatric heart surgeon Dr. Kirsten Finucane says she has seen significant improvements in the country’s healthcare system.
Dr. Finucane, formerly the Head of Pediatric and Congenital Cardiac Surgery at Auckland’s Starship Children’s Hospital highlighted this following her third mission to Fiji,
She led Hearts4Kids team in another round of life-saving surgeries and completed 15 operations in just five days for children with congenital heart disease at the Sri Satya Sai Sanjeevani Children’s Hospital.
She says that the success of these missions depend on local capacity, and Fiji is rising to the challenge.
“I’ve been coming to Fiji to do these missions since 2014. So before this hospital was here, we used to actually go to the local hospitals in Lautoka and CWM, and it was quite difficult working in those environments with hospitals with facilities that were stretched, overstretched.”
Dr Finucane says that with the new specialist hospital, things are much better.
“This hospital here, for the last three years, is fantastic. It’s really similar to working at home in New Zealand. So the first thing I could say is really, I don’t feel as if the children are in more danger when we do operations here.”
They also worked with Fijian doctors and nurses.
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