To save children from cardiac diseases: Israeli humanitarian charity expresses wish to expand to Cameroon.

The Director of Resource Department at the Save a Child's Heart, Ido Gutin, who spoke to reporters, said though currently active only in Southern and East Africa, the organisation remains open to expanding to Central Africa Subregion including Cameroon. 

Boasting of the organisation's towering achievements since establishment in 1995, Gutin said it was left to the government of Cameroon to open up for collaboration. 

Noting that Save a Child's Heart has treated over 7,500 children of cardiac diseases since creation, Gutin, explained that: "We are an Israeli humanitarian organisation with a mission of providing access to cardiac care for children from countries that have a challenge of providing that life - saving care...". 

On the criteria in selecting children to benefit from the essential medical care, Gutin explained that: "...the child must be suffering a cardiac disease and needs help. Unfortunately, 1in 100 children are born with congenital health effects. What that means is that hundreds of thousands are affected every year in every country and if they don't receive care early enough in their life, they may not be able to be treated later on and they might pass away and that will be a very big tragedy. So, the only criteria is that we find out about them from their doctors or families we review their cases if we can help". 

He insisted that parents of the children don't pay a penny to get treated. 

"Everything at Save a Child's Heart is funded through philanthropy and donations from very generous people around the world. We work with local governments as well in countries that we operate with for instance in Zambia and Rwanda. Both countries are partners of Save a Child's Heart and the ministries of Health also contribute towards the children's treatment. So, the parents are not asked to contribute. For any child that needs help, we will never turn them down because of the cost. We will find that funding from other funders," he said. 

Tracing the milestone covered since inception, Gutin revealed that the success stories have been tremendous. 

"We have been around since 1995 when it was founded here in Israel. Since then, we have treated over 7,500 children from 72 different countries including 19 countries in Africa," he detailed. 

He said Africa is one of the organisation's biggest partners. 

"We are currently focusing our efforts in training in several countries in Africa such as Ethiopia, Zambia, Ivory Coast, Tanzania and Zanzibar. That doesn't mean we are not looking forward to expanding our operations. Right now, we are looking at expanding our programme to Malawi and other parts of Sub-Saharan East Africa. The area constitutes a very big part of our programme," he disclosed. 

Counting achievements, projection

In its 30 years of existence, Save a Child's Heart organisation has been breaking new grounds and recording landmark achievements with 95% of children taken to the facility successfully treated.

Gutin said "the success story has been daily. Every child you met here today and other children who come here throughout the year are children that come sick and leave healthy. What that means for the parents is that we have given them a healthy child who now can go to school, develop properly and become anything that they want to become in life. Their cardiac condition will never affect them again".

"We have had one case from Cameroon in 2018. We hope that if the government and the Ministry of Health will want to collaborate more, we will be very happy to collaborate with them in future," he stated.

Harping on challenges, Gutin noted that: "We always understood that will not be able to bring all the children of the world to Israel to receive treatment. Unfortunately, it is not feasible but what we do understand is that we can impart knowledge in other doctors around the world to be able to treat children in their own countries...One of the big things that we have invest in is doctors from countries we work. We bring them here to Israel for hands on training; meaning they are part of our team. They treat children throughout the year and they receive the best medical training that they can have. It is basically a medical fellowship. It is an advanced training that we give the cardiologists, neurologists...and the idea is that when they go back home after several years here in Israel, they should be able to treat their own children. They can't do it alone. They have to be part of a team and what we do is that we train an entire team throughout the year," he said. 

He said "today, Tanzania is a great example in Africa. They are able to treat over 300 children on their own and they are also helping other doctors and nurses in other countries in Africa. Tanzania is one of the best examples of what we can achieve and we hope to the same in other countries like Rwanda, Zambia and others...".

This article was first published in The Guardian Post Edition No:3452 of Thursday May 22, 2025