Where’s the Coverage? Cardiologists in Israel Save the Lives of Children from 50 Countries and Counting

Save A Child’s Heart (SACH) provides pediatric heart surgery and follow-up care for indigent children regardless of race, religion, sex, color, or financial status. Based in Israel, the organization’s mission is “to improve the quality of pediatric cardiac care for children from countries where the heart surgery they need is unobtainable.” According to the organization’s Web site:

Every 29 hours our doctors save a child’s life in our medical facilities in Israel or on medical missions in partner countries around the world. Thousands of children are alive today because of a small group of medical professionals who volunteer their time and expertise to perform life-saving cardiac surgery and train local medical personnel.

Israel’s i24 reports on one recent patient:

At first glance, with her bright black eyes and wide smile, Lisa appears to be a perfectly normal baby girl. But she has hardly gained any weight since her birth six months ago due to a heart defect impeding her growth. Last Wednesday, baby Lisa and her mother made the arduous voyage from a small village in East Timor to Israel so that she could undergo a life-saving medical procedure.

When Lisa was born, her parents noticed that she was not growing as a normal infant would. After visiting the small hospital in their village, which provides only the most basic of health services, the doctor who examined Lisa said that everything looked fine, despite her having gained only six grams since her birth. Her illness remained undiagnosed and her parents began searching for answers.

Despite the considerable costs and their limited means, the family continued searching for medical professionals who would be able to provide their infant with the necessary medical care. Almost 40 percent of the population in East Timor, located in Maritime Southeast Asia, lives on under $1.25 per day.

[…]

SACH, an Israeli-based international non-profit organization founded in 1995 has carried out a number of projects in developing countries to help improve the quality of cardiac care for children and has already saved the lives of over 3,500 children from Africa, South America, Europe, and the Middle East. With the arrival of Lisa from East Timor, the number of countries involved in the program has reached 50.

Along with treating children from developing countries, the program has also trained more than a 100 medical personnel across the world.

[…]

Roughly 50 percent of those treated by the group at the Wolfson Medical Center in the central Israeli city of Holon are Palestinians from the West Bank or Gaza.

But, Google news reports on Israel and you won’t find any coverage in the mainstream press about Israel’s compassion for children around the world and next door in the West Bank and Gaza. The State of Israel –as evidenced by its efforts most recently in Nepal– and Israeli-based organizations such as Save a Child’s Heart indeed demonstrate the size of Israel’s heart. And yet… Where’s the coverage?