Professor KIM Woonghan with patients and their family

On February 24, Professor KIM Woonghan, College of Medicine’s ‘JW Lee Center for Global Medicine’, and his team performed surgery on Kanishka, a four-year-old Nepali girl, who had suffered from congenital heart disease. After the successful surgery, Kanishka was discharged from the hospital on March 11.

Kanishka’s heart disease was discovered five months after she was born. She had previously undergone surgery in India, but it was unsuccessful. In January, Dr. Kim visited Dhulikhel Hospital of Kathmandu University, where he was first introduced to Kanishka. She was in critical condition due to heart failure, having only months to live if she did not receive immediate medical attention. After their meeting, Kanishka was promptly brought to Korea to undergo surgery.

SNU Hospital’s Centre for Public Health and the Raphael International corporation aggregate financially supported Kanishka’s entrance to Korea. Since then, Kanishka underwent surgeries on February 4 and 23. Though several institutions and corporations including SNU Hospital provided financial support, she is still liable for 20,000,000 KRW. Dr. Kim explains, “We were extremely hesitant about performing the surgery because of the high probability of an unsuccessful result. Yet we had to carry through even without sufficient budget because she was in such critical condition.” However, Dr. Kim added that there is a greater significance in the fact that a life was saved and expressed his desire to help Kanishka in the future by continuously examining her condition.

The ‘JW Lee Center for Global Medicine’ has been conducting medical training programs for doctors in Nepal specializing in pediatric cardiac surgery. This is one of the many alternative methods of support directed to the long-term goal of improving health of Nepali children. Furthermore, the center continues their research in providing and transporting medical resource and technology to low and middle-income countries in hopes to achieve a more equitable distribution of medical treatment overall.

Written by LEE Hye Bin, SNU English Editor, hahahybes@snu.ac.kr
Reviewed by Professor Travis Smith, Department of Asian Languages and Civilizations, tlsmith@snu.ac.kr