Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Er­rol Ghany no longer has to be afraid of falling asleep fear­ful that his heart will stop beat­ing.

This af­ter he was seen by the ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers of Heart Beat In­ter­na­tion­al Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Five years ago, Ghany, a pen­sion­er, was di­ag­nosed with heart dis­ease re­sult­ing in on­ly 25 per cent of his heart be­ing func­tion­al.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia on Tues­day, he said he need­ed to raise funds for an im­plant called im­plantable car­diovert­er-de­fib­ril­la­tor which costs over $100,000.

He raised just over $20,000 through a lo­cal crowd-fund­ing plat­form.

Heart­beat In­ter­na­tion­al is the on­ly glob­al non-prof­it char­i­ty pro­vid­ing free ac­cess to pace­mak­er ther­a­py for dis­ad­van­taged women, chil­dren and men world­wide.

The or­gan­i­sa­tion op­er­ates in 12 coun­tries and Trinidad and To­ba­go is the lead­ing im­plant cen­tre and most ac­tive.

In the past ten years, the lo­cal arm has do­nat­ed over 1,000 de­vices.

Lo­cal chair­man Fran­cis Ot­t­ley told Guardian Me­dia Ghany may not need to spend mon­ey.

“Right now we should be able to do him or ac­com­mo­date him with the im­plant af­ter he comes on Fri­day. I feel rea­son­ably in two weeks time and we will cer­tain­ly give him a pri­or­i­ty to be able to get a new lease on life,” Ot­t­ley said.

The or­gan­i­sa­tion pro­vides ad­min­is­tra­tive screen­ing, sched­ul­ing and co­or­di­na­tion of sur­gi­cal im­plants, as well as pre-im­plant med­ical ad­vice.

While Heart Beat In­ter­na­tion­al ser­vices to pa­tients are free of costs, the same ser­vices of­fered by pri­vate in­sti­tu­tions for the pur­chase and im­plan­ta­tion of car­diac im­plantable elec­tri­cal de­vices in­clu­sive of hos­pi­tal stays, may range from $45,000 for sim­ple sin­gle-cham­ber pace­mak­ers to around $500,000 for biven­tric­u­lar de­vices.

Ot­t­ley said with the sup­port of the North Cen­tral Health Au­thor­i­ty, they will as­sist Ghany. He said peo­ple at times do not see the hard work and de­vo­tion many of lo­cal team mem­bers put in on dai­ly ba­sis to save lives.

“I called Mr Ghany and I told him about our will­ing­ness to as­sist him in his plight and that we would fol­low up with a call from our con­sul­tant who took over from the per­son he saw at first and he called him and of­fered him to come in be­cause we need to do a med­ical eval­u­a­tion”, Ot­t­ley said.

“When he comes we will rec­om­mend which de­vice he will need from our as­sess­ment from our ex­perts”.

Ghany told Guardian Me­dia he was elat­ed that in less than a week he re­ceived a life-chang­ing pro­ce­dure that will give him a new lease on life.