Daughter #3 is off to Israel to “Save a Child’s Heart”
Save a Child’s Heart (SACH) is an Israeli-based international humanitarian project, whose mission is to improve the quality of pediatric cardiac care for children from developing countries who suffer from heart disease and to create centers of competence in these countries. SACH is totally dedicated to the idea that every child deserves the best medical treatment available, regardless of the child’s nationality, religion, color, gender or financial situation. nnSACH is motivated by the age-old Jewish tradition of Tikkun Olam – repairing the world. By mending the hearts of children, regardless of their origin, SACH is contributing to a better and more peaceful future for all of our children.
Since 1995, Save a Child’s Heart (SACH) has treated more than 3,000 children suffering from congenital and rheumatic heart disease aging from infancy to 18 years of age from the “four corners of the Earth” – 45 countries where adequate medical care is unavailable. Approximately 50% of the children are from the Palestinian Authority, Jordan, Iraq, Syria and Morocco; more than 30% are from Africa; and the remaining are from Asia, Eastern Europe and the Americas. The annual number of children treated by SACH has grown dramatically from 48 cases in 1996 to 298 in 2012. At any given moment there are thousands of children suffering from heart disease around the world who require our assistance.
All our volunteers go out of their way to make life for the children and parents at the SACH house, clinic and in the hospital less stressful and more pleasant. They sit with parents or an unaccompanied child in hospital when they need extra attention or when the pressure of the unknown is getting to them, even if it means being in the hospital on a weekend or at night, and for some reason language is never a barrier; they muddle through. It is just something they do to help someone in distress feel more relaxed. The volunteers give photographs as a remembrance of being at SACH, send emails and photographs to parents who are not here to keep them informed and in short – they help make life a bit nicer for everyone and free the overworked SACH Staff to concentrate on other things that must be done. After all this is what a family does.Kath’s quote: “Love is not written on paper, for paper can be erased. Nor is it etched on stone, for stone can be broken. But it is inscribed on a heart and there it shall remain forever.”
Kath’s quote: “Love is not written on paper, for paper can be erased. Nor is it etched on stone, for stone can be broken. But it is inscribed on a heart and there it shall remain forever.”
At the SACH house – Little Shemsa from Tanzania and Dr. Yayu from Ethiopia, who is currently training with SACH and will become the first pediatric heart surgeon in his country.
Love-that is all.
