The Save a Child’s Heart (SACH) medical team, equipped with a portable Echocardiography machine, travels to partner sites in developing countries in order to evaluate pre and post operative patients together with local cardiologists.
Following the children’s examination, the SACH medical team, which includes two physicians – at least one of them a Cardiologist – decides together with the local partner on a list of children requiring heart surgery or catheterization. This list will be used by the local team to prioritize the cases and determine who should be sent for surgery and when, in accordance with available funding.
The cardiology clinics also provide essential follow-up care for children who were previously treated by SACH. To that extent, SACH has set-up coumadin clinics in partner sites for children who have undergone valve replacement and require a drug called Coumadin for the rest of their lives in order to regulate their blood thickness. SACH provides on-going supply of the medicine along with the examination kits required to test the blood, as well as monitors and counsels the clinic’s personnel.
During the clinics abroad, the Israeli physicians are often joined by colleagues such as Dr. Nicole Haeffner from Kinderhilfe Sansibar, Dr. Livia Kapusta from UMC St Radboud, in Nijmegen Holland and Dr. Rula Awwad, Pediatric Cardiologist from the Palestinian Authority, who has concluded a 4-year training fellowship at the pediatric cardiology unit at the Wolfson Medical Center under the SACH program.
During each clinic abroad, dozens to hundreds of children are examined, both pre and post operative patients, depending on the length of the mission and the destination. Still, presently more than 1,000 children on SACH’s waiting list are waiting for life-saving surgery.
To date thousands of children have been examined by SACH in 40 clinics abroad, which have taken place in Angola, Congo, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Jordan (Iraqi children), Nigeria, Russia, Rwanda, Tanzania and Zanzibar.