Posted on 11/27/2003 5:43:39 AM PST by TomB
A week-old baby from Iraq succesfully underwent heart surgery at the Wolfson Medical Center in Holon and is now recouperating in the cardiac intensive care unit.
The girl checked into an Israeli hospital Tuesday for an emergency heart operation after European hospitals refused to accept her for treatment.
Wrapped in a red-and-yellow blanket and held by her mother, tiny Bayan Jassem was met by Israeli doctors at the entrance to the Wolfson Medical Center emergency room with the Arabic greeting "Salam alaikum," or "Welcome."
Akiva Tamir, the hospital's director of pediatric cardiology, took the baby in his arms and carried her to a hospital bed, where he hooked her up to a heart monitor.
Tamir said the arteries to the girl's heart are reversed and procedure must be performed within two weeks of the girl's birth.
The baby's trip was organized by the Israeli humanitarian organization Save a Child's Heart., which became involved after an American doctor working with U.S. forces in Iraq discovered the defects a day after Bayan's birth in a hospital near Kirkuk in northern Iraq, said Simon Fisher, the organization's executive director.
The doctor contacted American Jonathan Miles, who telephoned Save a Child's Heart and the foundation's headquarters at Wolfson Medical Center to ask if they could perform the operation.
"No child in Iraq has ever had this operation done" because there are no doctors there who are trained to perform it, Miles said.
Tamir instructed a doctor in Baghdad by phone on how to stabilize the child's condition. She then flew with her parents to Amman, Jordan, before traveling by car to Israel.
The weekend journey probably would have been impossible before the U.S.-led military sweep into Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein, a bitter enemy of Israel.
Save a Child's Heart receives most of its funding from donations in Israel, the United States, Canada and Germany. It has provided medical treatment to almost 1,000 children -- including more than 300 Palestinians and several Jordanians -- since its founding in 1995.
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