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Parade Magazine, June 3, 2001, page 12
To Save A Child’s Heart
A team of Israeli doctors has performed more than 650 cardiac operations on
children from developing countries. They’ll go anywhere they’re needed
By Lyric Wallwork Winik
Many headlines from the Middle East tell of bombs and violence. But at the
Wolfson Medical Center in Holon, Israel, PARADE found a story of hope and
healing.
Here, a team of 75 volunteer doctors and nurses, including Jewish and Arab
Israelis, dedicate themselves to saving sick children from around the world -
Ethiopia, Moldova, Ukraine, Nigeria, Tanzania, China, Vietnam, Jordan and, yes,
the Palestinian territories.
The children have one thing common: a diseased or damaged heart. In the last
five years, Save a Child’s Heart (SACH), pioneered by Dr. Amram Cohen, 46, a
U.S.-trained surgeon, has performed lifesaving cardiac operations on more than
650 children from developing countries; 97% returned to a normal life.
The program began in 1995 with two Ethiopian children. At first, Dr. Cohen even
housed the patients and their families at his parents’ home. Today, Save A
Child’s Heart is the largest program in the world providing free pediatric
cardiac care, at an average cost of $10,000 and operation. (Private donations,
including support from Rotary International, cover medical costs, while doctors
and nurses donate their services for free.)
"For every million people, there are 700 kids born with a congenital heart
defect," explains Cohen. "If a child lives in the U.S. or Israel, there are
more than enough resources to care for them." But not in developing countries.
Without treatment, most children won’t live beyond 12 or 14 years.
In Ethiopia (pop. 64 million), 120,000 children are born every year with
congenital heart disease or damaged caused by infections. SACH’s doctors were
the first to perform heart surgery there. And when a team went to Nigeria in
1977, "the families had no concept that these kids could be saved," says Cohen.
Besides treating children, the surgeons, anesthesiologists and nurses of SACH
have set up clinics in Asia and Africa and trained doctors in their own
countries or in Israel (for up to 15 months). The sickest children who can
travel are brought to Wolfson Medical Center for surgery.
Cohen’s eyes well up when he talks about a mother in the former Soviet republic
of Moldova who was told her 2-month-old son was too young and sick to fly to
Israel for surgery. "Vassily’s mom sold her farm and bought a ticket to
Israel," he says. "She came to the airport with the child half-dead in her
arms, gambling that we would help." Cohen happened to be at the airport meeting
other Moldovan families when he heard his name being paged. He rushed the baby
to the hospital, operated and saved the boy.
But given the violence that has gripped Israel and the neighboring Palestinian
Authority, some of the team’s most poignant stories come from close to home.
Cohen speaks of one Palestinian family in particular: "Their daughter, Aziza,
spent 10 days in the hospital. The family was very formal, and the father said
very little to us the entire time." Going home, the family was stopped at an
Israeli military checkpoint. A radio reporter asked the father how he felt
about being stopped, and he replied with warm praise for the Israelis who had
saved his daughter’s life.
Cohen was driving home when he heard the father on the radio. "I was so
shocked," he recalls, "I almost drove off the road." Another Palestinian family
took out an ad in the local paper in English and Arabic thanking - all the
doctors and nurses for their remarkable efforts to give back the smile to the
faces of our children."
Since September, when Palestinian and Israeli hostilities resumed, Cohen and
his team have operated on 27 Palestinian children. Cohen is saddened that the
Palestinian Authority’s government won’t allow him to speak to their local
doctors about vital follow-up care, as he does with other doctors around the
world. But he prides himself on the personal relations he has developed with
the parents and children. "Everybody is the same the world over," Cohen says.
"All the parents want is a healthy kid."
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