The country can’t produce its own paediatric heart surgeons. But that may be beginning to change, starting in Cape Town.

The country’s health system is ravaged, but a team of volunteer doctors visit regularly: operating on the desperate and training local medical staff.

Doctors have performed a ground-breaking heart operation on a 59-year-old woman in Cape Town, Mediclinic Southern Africa has confirmed.

Johannesburg doctors are deciding whether to operate on six-day-old baby Ashleigh, who was born with part of her heart outside her chest.

A baby who underwent rare surgery in an Indian hospital after being born with his heart outside his body has died, a report said on Wednesday.