2.50 lakh: The number of babies born with acute cardiac ailments in India

Over 2.50 lakh infants born in India annually suffer from acute cardiac related ailments, requiring complex surgeries, a senior doctor said here today.

"Forty per cent of these children do not have access to funds and survival ratings among them are very poor," senior cardiac vascular and thoracic surgeon of KJ Hospital Dr PS Srimathi Seshadrinathan told reporters here.

Stating that much research is being done to identify the cause, she said one of the reasons could be inter-relation marriages, which is widely practiced in South India.

To a query, she said 70 per cent of these infants can lead a normal life after undergoing surgery.

She said the hospital had performed 146 surgeries on infants aged between 40 days and 18 years between December 2010 and April 2011 under the "Needy Little Hearts" project, an initiative by a city-based NGO KJ Research Foundation .

She said they aimed to perform a minimum of 200 such operations every year, for which around Rs two crore would be required.