Israel Matzav

Three Iraqi children to have heart surgery in Israel

Three Iraqi children will have complicated open-heart surgery at the Wolfson Medical Center in Holon over the next ten days. It's surgery that they could not get in their home country and it's being provided to them absolutely free. And they're not the first ones.

Ahmad, 13, Iman, 6, and one-year-old Lizan will be operated on by cardiologists in Israel as part of the humanitarian project 'Save a Child's Heart.' Since the association was founded 12 years ago, more than 1,600 children from 26 different countries, including the Palestinian Authority, have undergone surgery in Israel.

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According to Dr. Akiva Tamir, a children’s cardiologist at Wolfson, two of the children suffer from a hole between two heart chambers, which will be mended by surgery. The smallest child, Lizan, has a very severe defect, which often leads to sudden infant death, Tamir said.

Five children from Iraq have already been operated upon at the Wolfson Medical Center, and Ahmad, Iman and Lizan’s families have heard plenty about the treatments the other children received in Israel.

"We’ve heard good things about Israel,” Ahmad’s mother told Ynet. “Thank you for inviting us to come." The treatment the children required was not available in Iraq and Kurdistan, she said.

I don't have to tell you what the odds are of an Israeli child receiving treatment at the King Fahd Medical Center in Riyadh to take one example. On the other hand, given that the quality of medicine here is so much better, why would anyone want treatment there?

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:25 AM