On November 16, 2008 Save a Child's Heart (SACH) training and surgical mission left for Shijiazhuang in the Hebei Province in China.
This was SACH's 8th mission to China where its medical teams have saved in conjunction with Chinese colleagues more than 100 Chinese children sharing Israeli acquired knowledge and expertise. The team’s surgeon, Dr. Lior Sasson, worked in China with Dr. Han Jiangang, a surgeon who trained in Israel last year. Another Chinese surgeon, Dr. Wang Ming Hai, is now in Israel taking part in the SACH training program at the Wolfson Medical Center.
The 15 person medical team was joined by a filming crew, which followed them and the small Chinese patients during a very hectic and emotional week.
Before the arrival of the Israeli team in China the rumor spreads, and hundreds of people travel by foot, by bike or by train to see the doctors, desperately hoping that they will be able to save the lives of their children.
A photography exhibition was displayed in China during the week that the SACH mission was there. The exhibition, a joint project of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Save a Child's Heart was displayed in the city of Hebei, where the medical work was performed. The photographs in the exhibition, including photographs taken during SACH missions to China, taken by seven photographers, are mainly of children from vastly different regions of the world representing a wide variety of ethnic backgrounds. What links them – and the more than 2,000 other children from over 30 developing countries – is the fact that their lives were saved by the dedicated Israeli doctors, nurses and support staff who form the core of Save A Child's Heart.
Members of the SACH medical team in China took part in the high profile opening event in Hebei together with representatives of the Israeli embassy in Beijing, foreign diplomats, businessmen and local and international media representatives.
Israel channel 10 story about SACH's 8th mission to China