Expenses Paid For Operation

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31504, 19 October 1967, Page 2

Expenses Paid For Operation

(New Zealand Press Association) AUCKLAND, October 18. The two vice-presidents of the Mount Eden sub-centre of the New Zealand Red Cross Society, Miss Q. Furley and Mrs I. E. Sweetapple, will pay hospital costs for a Fijian Indian who will arrive in Auckland on Sunday for an urgent heart operation.

The costs will be $7OO. The Mt Eden sub-centre heard of the case of Ram Narayan, aged. 32, after the Colonial War Memorial Hospital in Suva wrote to an Auckland heart surgeon sending a case history of the patient and seeking advice. After learning an operation was essential, the hospital got in touch with Fiji Red Cross, which agreed to pay the return fare for Mr Narayan. He will be met by ambulance at the Auckland International Airport on Sunday morning and the operation will take place next Wednesday.

Another heart patient in Auckland, 17-year-old Hisham Bin Basham, from Malaysia, will receive an aortic valve replacement in Green Lane Hospital tomorrow. The operation was delayed a few days because tooth extractions were needed. In the meantime the young man has been befriended by Colombo Plan students in Auckland while in the charge of the secretary-manager of the Auckland centre of the Red Cross, Mr L. S. Poole. “He has been having the time of his life,” Mr Poole

said today. “He has been taken out for meals and on Monday he had a trip to Pakatoa Island.”