Children’s Heart Project Fact Sheet

PURPOSE:
To provide life-saving surgery for children with congenital heart defects in countries where appropriate treatment is extremely limited or non-existent.

• Samaritan's Purse identifies the children needing surgery, locates doctors and hospitals in the United States and Canada willing to donate their services, arranges for host families, and accompanies the children, their mothers, and an interpreter to North America, furnishing round-trip transportation.
   

• The project has helped more than 697 children.
   

• Some 54 hospitals in North America have participated in the Children's Heart Project, including the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., St. Vincent in Indianapolis, Ind., and Children's National Medical Center in Washington, D.C.

HISTORY:
While working in Bosnia in 1997, Samaritan's Purse found many children suffering from congenital heart defects who could not be adequately treated because the country's ethnic war had damaged hospitals and equipment and forced many doctors to flee. After contacting a hospital in the United States that agreed to donate medical care, Samaritan's Purse arranged for the first child to undergo what is often routine surgery in the United States. Today the project has moved beyond Bosnia into Kosovo, Mongolia, Honduras, and Uganda, with plans to expand into other areas of the world where treatment is unavailable.

As of September 2010, more than 697 children with life-threatening heart defects have been brought to North America for heart surgery not available in their country including:

• Oscar Castaneda, an 11-year-old boy from Honduras who had surgery in 2005 in Minnesota. He had a severe heart defect that left him tired, weak, and short of breath. After surgery, Oscar returned to Honduras and for the first time in his life was able to play soccer with his friends. Oscar's family lived in the poorest of neighborhoods, and for 11 years Oscar slept on a hammock. He never had a bed or clean water. Thanks to the compassion of the church that hosted him in Minnesota, Oscar's family received a new home in a nice community complete with bunk beds for all the children, and clean running water.
   

• Amina Naluyinda, a Ugandan girl who had surgery in Greenville, N.C., in 2004. Previously, she had to squat frequently to rest to her weak heart, and her mother had to carry her to school on her back every day. After surgery-despite waking up to chest tubes, a breathing tube, and a heart monitor-her huge smile could have lit up the darkest night as she peered down to her toes that once had very little circulation, but were now pink from proper blood flow. She now attends a Christian school, walking there on her own without getting tired.

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