A Heart Attack in Africa

Eddie Cross

Anyway, the next few days were interesting. In about 30 minutes I was in a nearby private hospital, in two hours I had my first ECG and blood tests and the next morning at about 07.30 I was seen by a specialist cardiologist.

She looked at the test results carried out overnight and the ECG and said they would do more tests. Over the next 6 days I was put through a series of tests and eventually on day 7 I was told, “Yes, you have had a heart attack. We are now going to have a look at what caused it.” I was transferred to another private hospital which had the facilities needed and at 06.00hrs I was on the operating table.

I came too at lunch time and was told that my coronary artery had been blocked in 3 places, and they had inserted two stents and a balloon to fix the problem. Highly sophisticated surgery and now my heart is functioning normally.

The team that handled me were 5 specialists, each of whom handled a different aspect of the problem. All locally trained but some having spent several years abroad getting specialist training and experience. My cardiologist said that the facilities for such complicated surgeries in Harare were world class and as good as she had seen anywhere. (They had done a heart valve replacement there recently.)

The second remarkable thing was that I did not have to put any money onto the table before being treated. My Medical Aid (Alliance), again totally local, picked up all the costs and even sent me a small gift in hospital, wishing me well and saying not to worry about the costs.

Now I do not know about you but remember this is 2025 and the place is Harare in Zimbabwe, a tiny country in the middle of southern Africa. A few years ago, I would have had to be flown out of the country, perhaps to India but certainly South Africa, to receive treatment, and I would have had to pay the costs up front. My family could not have been with me, and I may not have survived the journey. I am so grateful to all who made this possible.

Our only problem, and it is a big one, is that such treatment is simply not available to people without Medical Aid. Our State managed and financed system is a disaster. There are solutions but we are a long way away from such initiatives and for the great majority of our people, illness or accident, is a death sentence.

But apart from that, as a practicing Christian believer, what an amazing experience! I learnt all about my heart. Taken for granted for 85 years, a complex series of muscles and valves which move thousands of litres of blood around my body every day. When they measured my blood oxygen levels and I breathed in deeply, within seconds my oxygen levels responded – just think about what is involved. When they scanned my heart, I heard the valves working – each emanating a different sound.

This led me to think about the rest of my body – starting with my brain. Operating on a tiny flow of electricity, it receives billions of signals every second, more powerful than the most powerful supercomputer in the world, and that requires huge amounts of energy, vast cooling systems and support mechanisms. We marvel at what our electronics can do today, AI and the rest, but they are the kindergarten in tech when compared to our brains.

Our eyes, our hearing systems, the regenerative capacity of our body, replacing itself automatically every minute of every day. Then chemistry that takes the food we eat and the water we drink and turns it into nutrients that meet our every need and the energy we can use to run a mile in 4 minutes. This list goes on and on. I asked one of my team if she was a Christian and she said no. I told her, “How can you work with the heart all day and not see in it the very hand of God”.

Our Parliament was debating adopting new abortion laws at this time and my thoughts went to what happens at conception. Just think about that for a few minutes. Two people have sex and a tiny sperm swims up a fallopian tube to an ovary where it finds another tiny cell. The two combine and in that instant several things happen, a new human being is created and given life. What is life? We do not have any idea where it comes from or what gives those tiny things the capacity to create a human being. Not just that, that tiny organism in that uterus is a combination of the genes, characters of two people with a genetic history going back thousands of years. Even sets of finger prints which will bear no relation to any other human being ever born.

Then that new being, having spent 9 months in total darkness, no air to breathe and yet when born, they breathe and they cry and suckle their mothers. We can terminate that process, but we cannot emulate what is happening. Every step in that process is miraculous and when that takes place in a loving marriage, with both parents committed to each other, it can produce human beings who can change the world. This is the highest form of life on earth and only Christianity recognises it and explains how it was created.

Created, because no other explanation fits the bill. We are the product of divine design and purpose and discovering that, even if you have to have a heart attack to do so, is the best thing in the world. I am so grateful to all who made my experience so memorable but especially to God who made it possible from the beginning.