Saving hearts with healing hands
Published in The Australian Jewish News
February 13, 2019
When Dr Yayehyirad (Yayu) Mekonnen Ejigu was doing his rotation in paediatrics in Ethiopia, there was one child in particular whom he remembers vividly.
“She was coming back and forth into hospital. Very bright and beautiful, around 8 years old,” he recalls as we find a window to speak between his scheduled surgeries.
Yayu, 34, is slight, and quietly spoken in his blue scrubs as we chat in one of the common rooms for medical staff at Melbourne’s Royal Children’s Hospital (RCH). Doctors and nurses refill their water bottles and pass us by, leaving the hushed sounds of relieved post-surgical chatter hanging in the air.
“Her mum would take her out to the playground – but she would rarely play,” Yayu continues.
“You could see how much she wanted to though, but she just couldn’t. The second that she would start running, she would just get sweaty and tired.”
The young patient had a heart condition – and in Ethiopia such cases are often left untreated, simply “because the treatment isn’t available”, he tells.
“And that really kills you as a doctor – knowing that there is a treatment out there somewhere and you are not able to provide it … You see them suffering really, and they often end up dying painful deaths.”
That little girl would change Yayu’s life.