Our partnerships in India go back almost 20 years. Our commitment to helping the country develop the capabilities needed to deliver high-quality pediatric cardiac care was strengthened this week when we signed a Memorandum of Understanding with G. Kuppuswamy Naidu Memorial Hospital (GKNM) in Coimbatore.

A volunteer team from Mayo Clinic is paired with the GKNM team and is led by Joseph A. Dearani, M.D., cardiac surgery chair at Mayo Clinic and medical director to our board.

Children’s HeartLink Country Director Adriana Dobrzycka and Joseph A. Dearani, M.D., of Mayo Clinic, present a new partner certificate to Dr. Ragupathy Veluswamy, Chief Executive Officer, and  Dr. Raju Vijayakumar, pediatric cardiac surgeon at G. Kuppuswamy Naidu Memorial Hospital, Coimbatore, India

GKNM is located in the state of Tamil Nadu, in a region of considerable need for the most vulnerable children.

• GKNM is our fifth partnership in India and brings our total number of global partners to 16.
• Last year alone 51,000 children were served at our partner hospitals in India, yet the unmet need for this heavily populated country remains great.
• There are fewer than 50 pediatric cardiac surgeons in India.
• In 2016 32,000 children under the age of 5 died from congenital heart disease in India.

“This partnership will certainly improve our care for children with congenital heart disease,” says Dr. Vijayakumar, director of pediatric and congenital heart disease at GKNM. “We will fulfill the vision and mission of Children’s HeartLink in our part of the world.”

“Our training visit with our new partners last week was a great one for many reasons,” adds Dr. Dearani. “It was great to connect and establish a collaboration with a program that has had ties to Mayo in the past, and one that is receptive to the ways and philosophy of Children’s HeartLink.”

“We’re pleased to welcome our new partners at GKNM into the Children’s HeartLink family and to embark on another training partnership with the team from Mayo Clinic,” says Jackie Boucher, Children’s HeartLink President. “We could not do our work without dedicated and caring individuals who make it their life’s work to save and improve the lives of these kids. Every one of them is key to helping us meet our goal of reaching one million children by 2030.”

More information about our work in India here. Our other partner hospitals in India are Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences in Kochi (a Children’s HeartLink Center of Excellence), Narayana Hrudayalaya Institute of Cardiac Sciences in Bangalore, Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research in Chandigarh, and Rabindranath Tagore International Institute of Cardiac Sciences in Kolkata.