The Israeli charity, Save a Child’s Heart (SACH), says it is open to partnership with Nigeria to provide ailing Nigerian children free heart surgeries.
The Deputy Director of SACH, Ms. Tamar Shapira, announced the offer for Nigerian children in Tel Aviv, Israel, when some Nigerian journalists on a media tour of Israel visited the SACH Home.
Shapira disclosed that 169 Nigerian children already had free heart surgeries from Save a Child’s Heart Foundation, which, according to her, had offered free life-saving heart treatment to over 66,000 children from 66 countries since its inception 26 years ago.
She explained that the home works in partnership with Israel’s Wolfson Hospital, where the children are operated upon and treated at the Ida Carbakoff International Paediatrics Centre and later brought to the home for recovery.
“We are at the Save a Child’s Heart Children’s home, a home away from home for all the children that we the Save a Child’s Heart bring from all around the world to Israel for life-saving procedures.
“Our activities focus on bringing children like all the children we met today to Israel to undergo their life-saving surgeries and cauterisation.
“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 of paediatrics 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 teams on medical missions to work with our partners,” Shapira said.
She added: “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 anaestasia.
“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.”
A beneficiary, sixteen-year-old Nyamugisha Nyamuco from Burundi, who had a successful heart surgery by Save a Child’s Heart, told the News Agency of Nigeria that, thanks to the organisation, she has been given hope to live again.
“I have been here for two months and a half, I am okay now. I have done surgery, now I am okay. This people they make us hopeful, I want to thank them.
“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 came,” Nyamuco said.
Also speaking, a Paediatrics and Child Health Specialist from Zambia, Dr. Lawara Musa, 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 that, as part of Save a Child’s Heart Mission, doctors like him, after completing training, would return to Africa to perform 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 thigs from back home,” Musa said.
Founded in 1995, SACH is an Israeli humanitarian organisation providing cardiac healthcare to children worldwide. The organisation is based at the Edith Wolfson Medical Centre near Tel Aviv, Israel.
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