LIFESAVERS: Heart surgery by SACH doctors at Wolfson
Hospital in Holon
(Sheila Shalhevet / SACH)
LINDA GRADSTEIN visits an Israeli hospital that saves the lives of
hundreds of infant heart patients from around the world each year
From The Jerusalem Report, issue dated June
18, 2012
The two doctors move to the side of the pediatric ICU at the Wolfson Hospital
in Holon and speak in hushed tones.
“I looked at the smear and it is definitely sickle cell anemia,” Amir Lotan,
a hematologist, tells his colleague Tzion Houri.
“We’ll have to treat that first before we can do the surgery,” Dr. Houri, an
expert in internal medicine, says with a sigh. “We’ll have to do a blood
exchange and try to get it under control.”
Sickle cell anemia is a genetic disease which causes red blood cells to form
an abnormal crescent shape. These blood cells deliver less oxygen to the body’s
organs, which can complicate the heart surgery that the baby has come to Israel
to undergo.
Houri looks toward the mother who hasn’t understood a word of the exchange in
Hebrew. Palmira Sebastian, 32, is from Angola and arrived with her
nine-month-old son Juliom just a few days earlier for heart surgery sponsored by
Save a Child’s Heart (SACH). Dressed in a colorful print dress, she sits quietly
by her baby’s hospital bed. Wrapped in a blue and white hospital sheet like a
cocoon, Juliom sleeps deeply.
“The doctors found the heart problem as soon as he was born,” she tells The
Report. “I’m happy that he will get better here and I just want him to be
healthy.”
From Gaza
In the next bed is four-month-old Farah Mershed from Gaza. Farah is awake and
smiling, her dark brown eyes fringed by strikingly long lashes. At the end of
her bed floats a blown-up surgical glove decorated with a drawing, and a stack
of diapers. Her mother, Hulud, 28, dressed in a purple hijab, smiles. She has
been in the hospital for almost two months straight, never leaving her
daughter’s side. Houri says that in addition to the heart defect, Farah had a
hernia which was also successfully operated on. In the next day or two she will
go home to Gaza.
“This is my first time in Israel and at first I was very nervous,” she says.
“I don’t know Hebrew, but everyone here has been so nice, and I am so happy that
they helped my daughter,” she says.
Farah is taking Viagra to counteract pulmonary hypertension and several other
expensive medicines that SACH will continue to provide.
NEIGHBORS AND FRIENDS: Mohammed, a baby from Gaza, with
Dr Sion Houri at the Wolfson Hospital in Rehovot
(Sheila Shalhevet /
SACH)
Houri says both of these babies would have died without the operations
performed by SACH, a hospital-based charity that finances heart surgery for more
than 200 children each year from the developing world. Funded by donations and
the Israeli government, the children are brought to Israel, often with their
parents, for a stay that usually averages between two and three months.
When they are not in the hospital, the children and their caretakers live in
Legacy House, a building completed in April a few minutes away in Holon. They
spend most of their time in a well-equipped playroom or in the garden outside.
Each caretaker cooks for her own children, although the ingredients are supplied
by the house.
How much does all of this cost each patient? Nothing.
“It’s like Club Med here – everything is included,” Houri says with a grin.
“The surgery, the hospital stay, the plane tickets, the follow-up care – we
provide it all.”
Donations
In the US, he says, each surgery would cost between $100,000 and $400,000.
Here at Wolfson, it costs between $7,000 and $8,000. The doctors’ salaries are
paid by the hospital and all other costs are covered by donations from family
foundations and businesses. For example, the children from Angola are financed
by the LR Group, a large Israeli construction company founded by three former
pilots which has extensive interests in the African nation.
The only color skin we don’t like is blue. That
means the child is not getting enough oxygen
The European Union finances much of the care for the Palestinian children,
and the Ministry of Regional Cooperation chips in as well. The SACH annual
budget is $2.5 to $3 million dollars. Since its founding in 1995 SACH has
performed surgery on 2,800 children from all over the world.
“The only color skin we don’t like is blue,” says Houri, “because that means
the child is not getting enough oxygen.”
SACH is also training dozens of doctors, hoping to expand the number of
children it can help.
Naiz Majani, 34, from Tanzania, has been in Israel for two months. A
pediatrician, she is here on a one-year fellowship to become a pediatric
cardiologist – the first in her region of Mwanza, which has three million
people. One of her colleagues is studying to become Tanzania’s first heart
surgeon.
Majani has left her three children, including four-year-old twins, behind,
while she studies here.
“In Tanzania there are an estimated 500,000 children who need heart surgery,”
she says. “I was expecting the highest quality teaching and hospital before I
came here and that’s what I’m getting.”
SACH also sponsored a medical mission to Tanzania last summer, performing the
first heart surgeries ever carried out in the country.
While the organization describes itself as non-political, hospitals are one
of the few places in Israel where Israelis and Palestinians are officially in
daily contact.
Medical diplomacy
“I like to think of it as medical diplomacy,” says Simon Fisher, 40, the
British-born director of SACH. “We are establishing ongoing and everyday
relationships between Israeli and Palestinian parents through the medical
profession. We also want to extend the medical cooperation between hospitals in
Israel and the Palestinian Authority.”
Behind Fisher’s desk are 19 miniature flags of member countries of the NGO
Committee of the UN. In 2011 SACH received a special “consultant” status and has
participated in several UN discussions.
The organization is also hoping to expand at the Wolfson Medical Center and
build a new state-of–the-art pediatric ICU. They have launched a capital
campaign to raise $25 million and already have $5 million in the bank. The new
ICU will enable them to double the number of children they treat every year.
SACH trains dozens of doctors,hoping to expand the
number of children it can help
When I was a young resident here, I saw Israeli children die because we
didn’t have enough surgeons,” says Tunisian-born Houri, who immigrated to Israel
as a child. “Today every Israeli child who needs surgery gets it. But there are
at least five million children around the world who are waiting for heart
surgery.”
Just under one percent of children around the world are born with congenital
heart disease, and half of them will need surgery in their first year of life.
Others need surgery because of complications arising from untreated diseases
such as strep throat.
Fresh paint
SACH was founded in 1995 by Maryland-born Dr. Ami Cohen, a heart surgeon at
Wolfson. Cohen died in an accident while climbing Mount Kilimanjaro in 2001.
Photos of the pudgy, balding doctor are scattered around the hospital.
The Legacy Home, where the children and parents live, is a new addition.
Until last month, they lived in a rented apartment, and space was tight. Here,
the smell of fresh paint is still in the air. The small bedrooms have two single
beds and wooden closets. Multi-colored tiles decorate the shared bathroom and
shower.
“We are responsible for the children from the moment they arrive at the
airport – even if it’s 3 a.m. someone goes to meet them,” says housemother Laura
Kafif, 50, originally from Northern Ireland. “We try to make life as normal as
possible for them.”
Kafif helps impose a daily schedule, with the help of volunteers. For
children who do not need to go to the hospital for tests or check-ups, there are
volunteer helpers and quiet activities. Children either before or after surgery
can’t play ball, as a ball to the chest could be dangerous.
“We don’t even have slides in the garden outside,” says Kafif.
Volunteers come to teach the children how to use computers or to celebrate
the holidays. Some volunteers live in the house for several weeks at a time.
Others, like Molly Piccione, 23, originally from Babylon, New York, come twice a
week. Piccione gently holds Harith, a ten-month-old from Zanzibar, so his aunt
can eat her lunch.
Ton of fun
“I love being here,” says Piccione. “For the first few weeks I was a stranger
and I didn’t know how to connect with the children or their families but now
it’s a ton of fun. Today I played Bingo with the children. Sometimes we put on
music and dance.”
Piccione is on a Jewish Agency sponsored program called Masa. She hopes to
attend medical school next year.
A few days later, the baby with sickle cell anemia is out of the ICU and
staying at the house while he receives treatment in advance of surgery.
“She’s familiar with the disease because her brother has it as well,” says
Houri. “It’s hard because she knew about the heart problem but now she has
another disease to deal with as well.”
Houri says there is no cure for sickle cell anemia but there is treatment
which Juliom will receive. His surgery will be performed in a few weeks.
As for Farah, she has gone home to Gaza and will return in a month for a
follow-up visit.
“She’s looks like magic,” Houri says happily. “She’s gained so much weight.
She’s smiling and the mother’s smiling. It’s all good.”
It is amazing that with so many sick children in the world, that the world hates the one nation and people that are doing the most and best for children from all nations. Our world has lost its collective mind and common sense. wp
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