Guyana participates in historic world’s longest-distance robotic heart surgery

Guyana is mak­ing med­ical his­to­ry on Tues­day by par­tic­i­pat­ing in the ground­break­ing ro­bot­ic car­diac surgery that will be per­formed in that coun­try by a spe­cial­ist based in In­dia.

Pres­i­dent Ir­faan Ali, ad­dress­ing the Di­a­mond Ju­bilee Flag Rais­ing Cer­e­mo­ny on Mon­day night, said that the pro­ce­dure will sym­bol­ise how far the coun­try has ad­vanced since gain­ing in­de­pen­dence in 1966.

“…we will for­mal­ly set our foot­prints in the his­to­ry of health­care. Our new sur­geon, Mantra Free­dom 60, will per­form a car­diac surgery from Guyana to In­dia. The longest-dis­tance surgery in the his­to­ry of mankind will be per­formed from the shores of Guyana to­mor­row,” Pres­i­dent Ali said.

He told the cer­e­mo­ny that the event re­flects the gov­ern­ment’s vi­sion of build­ing a mod­ern and glob­al­ly com­pet­i­tive na­tion that em­braces in­no­va­tion and tech­nol­o­gy.

“This is the coun­try we’re build­ing—not afraid to em­brace any tool that is nec­es­sary to po­si­tion us as not on­ly a play­er in the glob­al econ­o­my but a com­pet­i­tive play­er look­ing to take its place in the front row of glob­al sta­bil­i­ty, re­silience and pros­per­i­ty,” he added.

The SSI Mantra is a pi­o­neer­ing sur­gi­cal ro­bot­ic sys­tem de­signed to de­moc­ra­tize min­i­mal­ly in­va­sive care by mak­ing ro­bot­ic surg­eries high­ly ac­ces­si­ble, pre­cise, and cost-ef­fec­tive.

De­vel­oped by SS In­no­va­tions, it is the first mod­u­lar, mul­ti-arm sur­gi­cal ro­bot sys­tem of its kind. —GEORGE­TOWN, Guyana (CMC)