33 children died at Kyrgyzstan Heart Institute after leadership change
During nine months under the new leadership of Kyrgyzstan's Research Institute of Heart Surgery and Organ Transplantation, 33 children died, compared with 18 during the same period a year earlier. The Health Ministry has launched an official investigation.
Gurban Gurbanzadeh3 min read
At the Research Institute of Heart Surgery and Organ Transplantation of Kyrgyzstan (NIIHSTO), 33 children died during the nine months under the new leadership. According to institute data, 18 children died during the same period last year. Dolon Zaripov, deputy director for medical affairs, reported this.
A new director, Jalil Sheishenov, was appointed in January 2026. After his appointment, institute staff asked the Ministry of Health of Kyrgyzstan to review the facility's work.
Problems at the institute
According to Zaripov, the institute lacks medicines, some equipment is not working, and surgical instruments are transported to another hospital for sterilization. There was no hot water at the facility for a month.
An apparatus for performing coronary angiography, purchased with public funds, arrived as early as February but has still not been installed, the deputy director said. As a result, patients have to be taken to the National Hospital. Zaripov linked some of the problems to the work of the management and said staff feared a further deterioration of the situation.
Health Ministry investigation
After the staff's appeal, the Ministry of Health of Kyrgyzstan issued an order for an official investigation. The commission included representatives of the ministry's finance, procurement and human resources departments, as well as a lawyer. The ministry said it would assess the situation based on the investigation's findings.
Director's response
Institute director Jalil Sheishenov commented on the information about the 33 children who died. He said all the children had been admitted with severe congenital heart defects and that the operations were medically necessary. Some patients were brought in in critical condition, with oxygen saturation of 50–60%, severe hypoxemia and heart failure.
“Not all of them died after the operation. Of the 33 children, 26 died after the operation, while the remaining 7 did not make it to the operation — they were admitted already in critical condition,” the director said.
The decision to operate was made by medical consultations. Of the children who died, Sheishenov personally operated on 11, while the others were operated on by other pediatric cardiac surgeons at the institute.
The director noted that some children arrive at the institute with advanced complications, particularly patients from regions who should have received surgical care significantly earlier but arrive months later. According to him, the problem has existed in Kyrgyzstan for years, and cardiac surgery services need to be developed in the regions so that seriously ill patients do not have to be transported to Bishkek.
Sheishenov added that diagnosis of congenital defects had improved, so they were being detected more often, but no one other than NIIHSTO operates on such children.
“The success of a cardiac surgeon does not account for 100% of the outcome: sometimes up to 50% depends on how the child is managed in the preoperative, intraoperative and early postoperative periods,” he noted.
According to the director, after a complex operation a child may spend up to 10 days in intensive care, and during this period fluid management, infection prevention and the work of the entire team are of great importance. Sheishenov said the institute was ready for an inspection and expert assessment of the circumstances surrounding the children's deaths, and that the situation needed to be considered comprehensively, including the patients' condition on admission, the timing of diagnosis, the performance of operations and postoperative care.
Source: kz.kursiv.media
