How Moroccan woman’s life was changed by Burjeel Hospital programme

Burjeel Hospital works alongside other several hospitals to fund operations and rehabilitation costs for people who cannot afford them.

Kaothor Nasri’s life changed when she was given free heart surgery at Burjeel Hospital. She could not afford the Dh100,000 cost of the surgery but she found out about Burjeel Hospital which works aloShow more

ABU DHABI // Until two years ago, Kaothor Nasri spent the majority of her adult life short of breath, out of shape and hard-pressed to finish sentences without taking long pauses.

She believed her health problems were caused by a lack of exercise, a poor diet and inhalation of fumes from products in the hair salon where she worked.

Eventually it got to the point where she could barely walk to her apartment or to her car, so, the 34-year-old Moroccan checked herself in to Noor Hospital.

Here she was diagnosed with pneumonia, which kept her in hospital throughout Ramadan 2012.

But doctors eventually found she had even more severe problems.

Due to a bout of rheumatic fever in her childhood, doctors found that one of her heart valves, which releases blood from the lungs to the heart, was too tight.

This required surgery costing Dh100,000, which she could not afford with her modest salary.

“I didn’t think about my condition, I just thought of the financial aspect. Considering my situation and my salary it was clear that I couldn’t,” said Ms Nasri.

“That was until I heard about Burjeel’s programme.”

Burjeel Hospital works alongside several other hospitals to fund operations and rehabilitation costs for people who cannot afford them.

So far, more than 100 patients have benefited from this programme, with Burjeel Hospital pledging to provide 1,000 more surgeries over the next five years. Shortly after Ms Nasri’s diagnosis, Dr Mohammed Ibrahim, of Noor Hospital, referred her to Dr Tarig El Hassan, a full-time cardiac surgeon at Burjeel Hospital.

“I walked into Dr El Hassan’s office and I left 15 minutes later ecstatic at the fact that I was scheduled for open-heart surgery,” said Ms Nasri. “People shouldn’t feel happy that they are about to undergo serious surgery but he made me feel at ease.”

Dr El Hassan said: “We had already studied her case so we knew we would have to take quick action. So, after some diagnosis, we explained to her what we wanted to do and started the procedure to get her an operation shortly afterwards.”

Dr El Hassan told Ms Nasri to spend the night in the hospital so that they would perform surgery on her that week.

“When I arrived, I called him and he was the one who came downstairs, in his surgery clothes to welcome me. He took me through the hospital and showed me where I would be sleeping and then where the surgery was to take place,” said Ms Nasri.

By following Burjeel Hospital’s recovery plan, Ms Nasri now lives a healthier lifestyle, involving a better diet and regular exercise.

Dr El Hassan said the most common reasons for heart problems are a sedentary lifestyle, smoking, high blood pressure, high blood sugar, diet and, in some cases, a genetic predisposition.

“The treatment is not only doing the bypass surgery, our goal is to see that even after surgery, we want to solve the problem to make sure over the next 20 years we don’t have patients running into the same problem,” he said.

Ms Nasri goes to a fitness centre and consults with medical professionals. She said the operation had turned her life around. “I feel as if I am a new person with a new life” she said. “Imagine, I wouldn’t have been able to complete this sentence before this operation.”