CHRISTIAAN Barnard, the South African surgeon who transplanted the first human heart, has brought a Russian toddler to South Africa for emergency surgery as a favour to Soviet former president Mikhail Gorbachev, press reports said. Barnard was quoted as saying two-year-old Gleb Endokimov has a constriction in the main aorta as well as in the arteries and valves leading to his lungs. Gleb arrived in Cape Town on Sunday with his mother and Barnard and was admitted to the City Park hospital, where a team of South African doctors are expected to examine him on Tuesday. Barnard, 79, told Die Burger newspaper he was approached to help Gleb by Gorbachev, because Russian doctors do not have the necessary equipment to carry out the operation. – AFP