A successful mercy dash
December 14, 2011
MARIA de Jesus Freitas took her new daughter home hours after giving birth in a Dili hospital - but it took a couple of return trips before doctors diagnosed her life-threatening condition.
Baby Nelia had been unable to feed or digest her food due to a rare birth defect that left her with a malformed oesophagus.
Without surgery to correct the condition - which doctors in East Timor lack the specialist skills to perform - Nelia had little more than a week to live.
But a mercy call to ROMAC has saved Nelia's life. She had surgery at the Monash Children's Hospital in Melbourne last Friday, within five days of her East Timorese doctors raising the alarm, and doctors are now confident the two-week-old will make a full recovery.
Surgeon Peter Ferguson said about one in 4000 babies was born with oesophageal atresia, which in Australia would be corrected with surgery within days.
'It is usually discovered when babies start feeding and they are not able to swallow, so they choke and produce a lot of frothy saliva from their mouth,' he said.
By the time she arrived in Australia, Nelia's case was a surgical emergency, crucial to keep her from breathing saliva and other fluids into her tiny lungs.
Doctors reconnected her lower oesophagus to the upper oesophagus and chest, in a 90-minute operation.
'She still requires a bit of help with her breathing, and that's likely to continue over the next day or two,' Mr Ferguson said. 'She's receiving some feeds through a tube in her oesophagus but in a few days' time we'll start feeds by mouth'.
'Some babies born with this condition may have some minor issues with swallowing and feeding in future, but most do well. Nelia has been well for the last few days since the operation, and that's certainly one of the major hurdles to get over.'
ROMAC's John Benger said Nelia was one of the youngest patients ROMAC had helped bring to Australia for treatment, and meant 'this little baby will see this Christmas and perhaps 40 or 50 Christmases beyond'.
He said the past 10 days had been overwhelming for Nelia's mother, who had never seen an aircraft before flying to Australia with her critically ill baby.
'The first thing we did when they arrived was give them some warm clothes,' he said. 'The next thing we had to do was teach them how to use flush toilets and gas cooking - it's a very basic existence over there.'
Mrs Freitas said through a translator that she was 'very, very happy' to know she could take a healthy baby back home and would do everything she could to care for Nelia.
She was scared when she landed in Australia, she said, but the local East Timorese community helped her, and she wanted to thank ROMAC and the doctors and nurses who saved her baby's life.
