Darfur refugee youth gets life-saving heart surgery

An 18-year-old refugee from the horrors of Darfur in Sudan underwent free, minimally invasive heart surgery on Wednesday at Holon's Wolfson Medical Center, through the Save a Child's Heart (SACH) organization. Jamal Mohammed, who lives near the central bus station in rundown south Tel Aviv, left Sudan without his parents and seven siblings to cross the Egyptian border into Israel a few months ago. When he left, he was unaware of his heart condition, though he did suffer from certain symptoms that later proved threatening to his life.

After being examined by cardiologists at Beersheba's Soroka University Medical Center, he was told that his only chance for survival was to undergo catheterization and have a tiny "umbrella" installed in a coronary artery. As a refugee with no health insurance or money, he could not have dreamed of undergoing such a procedure. But SACH's chief cardiologist Dr. Akiva Tamir, Wolfson's chief of pediatric cardiology - and other staffers - volunteered to perform the surgery, and the AGA Medical Corporation donated the expensive "umbrella" device.
Lire l'intégralité de l'article » (Source: article de Judy Siegel-Itzkovich @ JPost)