Coronary artery disease is the leading cause of death in Fiji and has been so for decades, says cardiologist Dr Vijay Kapadia.
He said starting a tertiary cardiac unit in Fiji was not easy but there were highly capable local doctors and nurses who just needed upskilling and training.
Dr Kapadia is in Fiji helping to restart the Catheterisation laboratory (cath lab) at the Colonial War Memorial Hospital (CWMH) Cardiology department in Suva which had not been operational for some time.
“Having worked here as a junior doctor made me very aware of the ground realities, the challenges and the opportunities that exist in medicine in Fiji,” he said while sharing his journey of starting a cardiology department at the CWMH in Suva.
“I know how good the people are, it’s just that they haven’t been exposed to all the extra training experience.
“And I also saw the very great need for management of heart disease, there is need for so much here so you can’t just say that heart disease is everything, but heart disease remains the number one cause of death in the world.
“In Fiji, it has been the number one cause well before it became a feature in the western world or other countries.”
He said there were different types of heart disease.
“We had initially focused on rheumatic heart disease which is a very big problem still and needs ongoing medical and surgical management, however, the bigger heart problem has always been coronary artery disease, the disease that causes heart attacks, and causes excess deaths often prematurely.”
He said the basis of treatment was prevention and looking after all the risk factors that promoted heart disease.
“However, in Fiji there is a very large number of patients who need to have procedures such as an angiogram to see if they need stenting done to the arteries of the heart or whether they need a heart bypass operation.”
