Hospital defends decision not to operate on Vanuatu baby

5.30pm UPDATE



Starship Hospital in Auckland is defending the decision not to perform potentially life-saving surgery on a baby girl from Vanuatu.

Paediatric specialists recommend six-week-old Karen Mandan not be operated on for an incurable heart lesion.

Starship clinical leader Richard Aickin says suggestions the operation would have been performed on a New Zealand baby are misleading.

He admits if she lived close to cardiac surgeons and high tech-equipment, her chances would improve.

But he said the severity of the lesion offers a modest prospect of survival, even if the patient lives in New Zealand.

Dr Derek Allen said Starship Children's Health made the decision not to perform life-saving heart surgery on six-week Vanuatu girl Karen Mandan because she would probably still die before she was five.

But Dr Allen said even five years could make all the difference.

He said medical progress happens very rapidly so who knows what could be achieved in five years.

Karen has no chance of living more than 3 or 4 months without the surgery.

She will go home to Vanuatu to die.

Dr Allen, who brought the five-week-old to New Zealand, believes she would have received the life-saving surgery if she was a kiwi.

He said Starship Hospital is doing what it thinks is best for a child from Vanuatu.

But Dr Allen believes this probably would not happen to a New Zealand child with the same pathology.

He said medical advances occur so rapidly that extending Karen's life by five years could be enough to save her in the end.

- Newstalk ZB