Save a Child's Heart

By Avi Hein

Save A Child's Heart, based in Holon, Israel, is the largest undertaking in the world providing free critical pediatric heart surgery and follow-up care to children from developing countries, regardless of background. Save a Child's Heart was founded in 1995 by the late Dr. Amram "Ami" Cohen, an American immigrant to Israel, born and raised near Washington, DC.

Save a Child's Heart brings children from developing countries to the Wolfson Medical Center in Holon, a suburb of Tel Aviv, to be operated on by a volunteer staff of Israeli doctors and nurses. They have treated children as young as a few days old and as old as teenagers. Despite the hardships they face, Save a Child's Heart has a stunning success rate of 96%.

As part of the process, Save a Child's Heart also brings in medical personnel from the patients' countries and trains them in life-saving pediatric cardiology and follow-up care. Since 1995, Save a Child's Heart has treated almost 1,000 children from the Palestinian Authority, Ethiopia, China, Nigeria, Zanzibar, and many other nations. An Iraqi baby with serious heart problems was brought to Israel (via Jordan, as the Iraqis refused to make a direct flight to Israel) in late 2003. The Israeli doctors (including the son of Iraqi Jewish immigrants) provided medical services unavailable in Iraq and operated on her for more than 21 hours, without cost to her family.

Save a Child's Heart is an all-volunteer organization funded by donations from around the world.