ITAR-TASS News Agency
TASS
May 1, 2004 Saturday
Int’l teams of doctors to give 25 heart surgeries to Belarus kids
By Larissa Klyuchnikova
MINSK
A traditional charity action The Children’s Hearts begins here Sunday.
Its co-organizers are the Belarussian Children’s Fund and the Public
Health Ministry, with the support of the Minsk Rotary Club.
Assistance to it has also come from the Irish charity organization The
Chernobyl Children’s Project and the international charity group
Sophia.
As part of the action, an international team of cardiac surgeons will
give extremely complicated open heart surgeries to 25 Belarussian
children having congenital heart diseases.
The team made up of 13 surgeons with Dr William Novic in the lead will
be working for a period of two weeks at the Belarussian Republican
Center for Cardiology.
All the surgeries will be gratuitous and the doctors are committed to
observing the highest world surgical standards, spokespeople for the
Cardiology Center said.
The Children’s Hearts program has helped save the lives of 311
children, who have been given surgeries in the best clinics of Russia,
the U.S., Armenia, and Germany.
Official statistic data indicates that about 800 children with
congenital heart and blood vessel dysfunctions are born in Belarus
every year.
On the whole, about 10,000 Belarussian children need surgical treatment
of cardiovascular problems at the moment.