Israeli charity organisation set to offer free heart surgeries for Nigerian children

A charity organisation in Israel, Save a Child’s Heart, says it is open to partnership with Nigeria to offer free medical surgery for Nigerian children suffering from various heart diseases.

Ms Tamar Shapira Deputy Director of SACH made this known to some Nigerian journalists in Tel Aviv during a visit to the SACH Home, Tel Aviv on a media Tour of Israel.

Shapira said that 169 Nigerian children have already had free heart surgeries from Save a Child’s Heart Foundation which have offered free life-saving heart treatment to over 66,000 children from 66 countries since its inception 26 years ago.

She said that the home works in partnership with Israel’s Wolfson Hospital where the children are operated, treated upon at the Ida Carbakoff, International Pediatric Center and later brought to the center for recovery.

“We are at the Save the Child’s Heart Children’s home, a home away from home for all the children that we the Save the Child’s heart bring from all around the world to Israel for life-saving procedure.

“Our activities focus on bringing children like all the children we met today to Israel to undergo their life-saving surgeries and catherization.

“We also bring medical team members from partners sites that we have around the world for training here in Israel. We train them in different fields I pediatric cardiac care, so that they can go back to their own countries to treat children independently.

“Also a number of times during the year we send medical team on medical missions to work with our partners.

“Since the establishment of Save a Child’s Heart 26 years ago, we treated more than 6,000 children from 66 different countries.

“50 per cent of the Children we treat are Palestinian children, 45 per cent of the children are from different African countries and the from different part of the world. We treated a number of children from Nigeria throughout the years.

“At the moment we have twelve doctors from our training programme, from Zambia, Ethiopia, from Palestinian Authorities, we also have one from Nigeria now training in Anastasia,” Shapara said.

Responding to questions on “As I said before, if there are cases, we are more than happy if we can help these children.

“We are opened to helping children, working with new partners from around for the benefit of children with heart disease, from any country in Africa and around the world,” Shapara added.

Sixteen-year-old Nyamugisha Nyamuco from Burundi who had a successful heart surgery by Save a Child’s Heart told our correspondent that thanks to the Center, she has been given hope to live again.

“I started to get sick from Burundi, they know that I have a heart disease, they tell us that we must come here and they accept here in Israel and then we come,” Nyamuco said.

Dr Lawara Musa, Pediatric and Child Health Specialist from Zambia lauded the foundation for its life-saving assistance to children across the world and the success rate on that with the hi-tech procedures.

Musa said as part of Save a Child’s Heart Mission, doctors, like him, after completing training, would return to Africa to carryout cardiology treatment on children which would reduce the rate of sending children abroad.

“Here, we cater for all races, and it doesn’t matter about the Nationality. We have several children from Africa here.

“I have been here for two months we have had zero mortality, we have not recorded any death.

“The purpose of this training is to bridge the gap. Myself and my colleague will be the first team from our country to form a cardiac unit.

“So with the knowledge that we will gain from here, we will be able to write up what is actually required to facilitate such kind of intensive care, instead of just having a room and a bed but the actual equipment that we need.

“So in essence, bringing what we have learnt from here, bringing them back home that way we will reduce the number of kids we bring from Africa, we can do some of the things from back home,” Musa said.

Save a Child’s Heart is an Israel-based International Humanitarian Foundation with a mission to improve quality pediatric cardiac care in developing countries and Israel.