British medical team in Qena to heal “Little Hearts”
The team carried out free surgeries on underprivileged children and train Egyptian doctors
Ashraf Abo Arafe
A 10-member volunteer medical team led by a British surgeon is in Egypt to perform surgeries for 70-80 under-privileged children and train 100 Egyptian doctors in Qena General Hospital. The medical team includes paediatric surgeons, cardiologists, anaesthetists, perfusionists, ICU nurses and technicians.
British charity Muntada Aid collected donations from British citizens to carry out the surgeries through its “Little Hearts” project.
Dr Abdullah Erdem, Consultant Paediatric Cardiologist, said: “I am delighted to be part of this medical mission with Muntada Aid. There is a lot of work involved in bringing such a mission together, Muntada Aid have done an excellent job. I am grateful to them for giving me the opportunity to help sick and suffering children. I hope I can continue being of service and help more children in the future.”
Kabir Miah, Programmes Manager, Muntada Aid, said: “Muntada Aid is committed to developing access to paediatric cardiac care services across Africa. Every year in Africa, around 300,000 children are born suffering from congenital heart defects and less than 1% of them receive the necessary care. As well as carrying out surgery missions, Muntada Aid wishes to set up permanent cardiac programmes in Africa, where operations will be carried out throughout the year and will provide training to cardiac surgeons.
The first programme in Africa will be set up in El-Kordy, in partnership with the University of Mansoura. These programmes will ensure the long term sustainability of the project. We are grateful to the President of South Valley University for his kindness and generosity in hosting us. We are grateful to the Governor of Qena for taking the time to visit and meeting our team and showing his support. We thank all the medical staff from Qena University Hospital for their participation and support during our mission. We hope this will be a long and fruitful collaboration that continues to save the lives of more and more children.”
British Ambassador to Egypt Sir Geoffrey Adams said: “I am delighted to see a people-to-people initiative that reflects the British people’s readiness to support Egypt. As a government, we continue to support Egypt’s efforts to reform its healthcare system. Today the British people proved this is their goal as well.”
Muntada Aid has carried out 7 “Little Hearts” missions in Egypt in the past 5 years, in the cities of Zagazig, Mansoura, and Qena. In September 2018, the organizations’ doctors performed lifesaving operations on 71 children and trained around 100 medical professionals in Mansoura University Hospital.
Since its launch in 2012, Muntada Aid has taken their volunteer medical team of paediatric cardiac care specialists on 29 missions to nine countries and provided life saving surgery and intervention to over 2000 children.
