2nd heart mission to Palestine in 2010 saves more children’s lives

On January 28th, a 4-member team of surgeons and nurses from Messa, Italy completed a Palestine Children’s Relief Fund (www.pcrf.net) mission to provide life-saving open-heart surgery for sick babies from the West Bank and Gaza Strip at Makassed Hospital on the Mount of Olives in East Jerusalem. This was the second mission to Palestine in 2010 in pediatric cardiac surgery and part of the ongoing PCRF program to build the only congenital heart program to serve the children from the territories. Led by surgeon Dr. V. Stefano Luisi, who has led several missions to Makassed in the past with the PCRF and is scheduled for five more trips in 2010, the team included junior surgeon Dr. Luigi Arcieri, anesthesiologist and intensive care doctor Elisabetta Perversi and physiotherapist nurse Maura bDell’Amico. Most of the operations were performed by Dr. Vivian Bader, the surgeon in Makassed who is being trained by the visiting teams to eventually take over this program and start operating independently. Nearly 200 children had life-saving surgery through this program in 2009