Kris Rampersad
Media & Heritage Specialist, Trinidad & Tobago
Title: Rare Congenital Disorder and Heart Failure Complex Surgical Repair and Post-Operative Regeneration in an adult female
Biography:
Dr Kris Rampersad is an independent cultural and literary sustainable development educator, and multimedia producer/publisher, journalist, facilitator, lecturer, trainer & consultant. She has a BA First Class Honours and PhD degrees from the University of the West Indies, Trinidad and Tobago; Diploma in Mass Communications from the Jawaharlal Nehru University, India; Commonwealth Professional Fellowship from the Association of Commonwealth Universities, UK; Nuffield Foundation Fellowship to Wolfson College, Cambridge University and the Foreign Press Centre of Japan along with numerous skills development training in management, leadership, diversity management, ICTs and new media, journalism, communications, fundraising, networking, gender equity, advocacy among others.
She has done extensive work across the connected Americas especially Caribbean and Latin American region in raising appreciation and building capacities of stakeholders at all levels for cultural heritage, diversity, equity and inclusion. All three Caribbean countries recently admitted to the UNESCO World Heritage lists benefitted from her work and she was also a pioneer of the Commonwealth Women Agents of Change initiative, leading the Caribbean agenda for change and educating women in political and other leadership spheres. She has also been actively involved in inspiring youth through literacy and literary appreciation across the Caribbean.
Abstract:
The World Health Organisation Global Hearts initiative acknowledges CardioVascular Disorders as the number one killer in the world. It also recognizes the paucity of information and understanding about cardiovascular disorders, particularly as regards women with adult congenital heart defects (CHD), on right heart failure, transposition of the greater vessels (TGV) the high incidence in the developing world, the potential impact of travel and exposure to prolonged seated immobility, and the journey through diagnosis, treatment and post-surgery recovery challenges.
Through presentation of this incredible journey to symptom manifestation, diagnosis, surgical repair and the equally incredible post-surgery recovery period of heart and body regeneration from this particularly rare compound of congenital defects that surfaced only near mid-life in an adult female, this case story may explode some commonly-held notions of CHDs and illuminate directions for further diagnosis and treatment in general and in relation to adult women in particular. This case of right heart anomalies and failure also point to some startling departures in popular understanding of heart conditions largely drawn from knowledge of left heart anomalies.
Additionally, in a rare zone of survival, it highlights personal efforts to treat with the seemingly little understood post-operative period of a body and its organs readjusting to restructured heart after a lifetime, coping with regeneration and its survival efforts to date. It further aims to highlight some of the challenges and limitations of screening and detecting, particularly in the context of health care in the developing world.