A fully equipped Save a Child’s Heart (SACH) medical team travels to partner sites in order to teach and perform life-saving heart surgery. During the missions the medical team will work alongside local personnel, whom in many cases have already been trained in Israel, operating on children and sharing knowledge in the various related fields such as: cardiology, cardiac surgery, intensive care, anesthesia, perfusion and nursing.
During the SACH teaching and surgery missions abroad, the Israeli teams are periodically joined by partner organizations such as Children's Heart Link and the Gift of Life from the U.S.A., and physicians from partner hospitals, such as Dr. Giancarlo Crupi and his team from the Riuniti Hospital di Bergamo in Italy, Dr. Livia Kapusta from UMC St Radboud, in Nijmegen Holland and Dr. Tom Pezzela of the World Heart Foundation.
As part of the onsite training SACH teams provides lectures in all the related fields of pediatric cardiac care as well as courses such as the Pediatric Advanced Life Support (PALS) course.
To date, 14 teaching missions have taken place in Ethiopia, China, Mauritania, Moldova and Ukraine, and have resulted in the treatment of more than 130 children and the onsite training of hundreds of medical personnel worldwide.