Doctors from Wolfson Hospital Treat Children’s Hearts in Tanzania

25 Tanzanian children will undergo cardiac catheterization this week, which will not only improve their quality of life but also extend their life. Just before the Israeli team from "Save A Child’s Heart" organization begins its work, Ynet media caught a brief conversation with the delegation which let us know how exciting work it is to treat children in Africa.

After saving the hearts of more than 4,900 children around the world, Save A Child’s Heart organization is undertaking its action with the intervention of a delegation to Tanzania, which begins its work this week at Jakaya Kikwete Cardiac Institute, where Prof. Mohamed Janabi is the Director, in the city port of Dar es Salaam.

In the coming week, Dr. Sagi Assa, Director of the Pediatric Cardiology Unit at Wolfson Hospital, will screen 25 children who were born with heart defects, and for which, in some cases, pose an immediate risk to their life. In other cases, these problems may lead, without receiving an appropriate treatment, to shorten their life much before they reach the age of 20.

All catheterizations are done together with the local team, which learns and experiences the most advanced techniques of catheterization in the world. "Our goal is not to come, do the job and go, but training the doctors here for a better catheter; they thus can diagnose themselves thousands of children who are in need of treatment," Assa stresses.

In addition, two nurses and two anesthesiologists from Wolfson Hospital and two other senior catheters accompanied by two nurses from Germany, whom Assa had met when he specialized in pediatric catheterizations in Berlin, also joined the delegation.

Doron Kupershtein