Go through the passage given below carefully and respond to the questions that follow. Certain sections have been underlined to assist you in locating relevant information.
Receiving news that a child may be living with a cardiac abnormality can be devastating for any family. The distress deepens when access to specialised paediatric heart care remains out of reach due to geographical distance from medical facilities. Congenital Heart Disease (CHD), which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Atlanta, U.S., acknowledges to be the most common congenital disorder, is responsible for 28% of all congenital birth defects, and accounts for 6%-10% of all the infant deaths in India. Specialists in child medicine maintain that prompt clinical action can preserve the lives of 75% of these young patients and enable them to lead healthy lives. The absence of a national-level framework for managing cardiovascular conditions in children leaves an enormous segment of the affected population without access to care. Estimates suggest that over 1,00,000 children continue to be added to the already large pool of patients awaiting surgical procedures.
As per the Pediatric Cardiac Society of India (PCSI), the occurrence of congenital cardiac anomalies is one in every 100 live births; or an estimated 2,00,000 children are born with CHD every year. Only 16,000 of them receive treatment. At least 30% of infants who have complex defects require surgical intervention to survive their first birthday but only 2,500 operations can be performed each year. A striking illustration of this crisis is the country's foremost All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), where infants are placed on waiting lists extending until 2026 for heart surgeries. A former senior health official has noted that child healthcare has suffered sustained neglect with minimal progress, largely because building a full-fledged paediatric cardiology infrastructure is widely viewed as economically impractical — it demands heavy resource allocation and capital investment that those in power tend to sidestep. There are 22 hospitals and less than 50 centres in India with infant and neonatal cardiac services. These facilities are also unevenly spread across the country. A cardiology department report from AIIMS in 2018 revealed that South India alone accounted for 70% of these centres; the majority of which are situated in regions where the actual burden of CHD is comparatively lower.
What is/are the claim(s) made by specialists in child medicine regarding CHD?
Correct Answer :
Only (b) and (c)
Solution :
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