In the wealthy countries of the world, there are many cardiologists and heart surgeons — enough to supply the needs of a population where hearts tend to be healthy in the first place, due to good nutrition an the wide availability of superior medications.
In the developing world, the opposite situation exits. First, there is widespread heart disease, resulting from poor nutrition and the unavailability of most sophisticated medications. One prominent example occurs when a child’s sore throat develops into strep throat, which then develops into weakened heart valves — this when a simple regiment of antibiotics would have cured the sore throat, had they been available.
The prevalence is compounded by the lack of cardiologists and heart surgeons in the developing world. Many medical students are trained in the west and chose to remain in the countries where they were educated. All too few, return to their countries of origin. Those who do often find the existing hospitals are ill equipped to perform open heart surgery.
Surgeons of Hope sends teams consisting of the very finest heart surgeons in the US, along with support staff. These individuals generously donate their time and their skills, often working in much more primitive circumstances that those afforded by the hospitals which employ them, and operate on far more cases than would be usual at home. We call these teams sent to far away locales medical missions.
Medical missions always have two purposes:
- To save the lives of underprivileged children, and
- To train local doctors in modern cardiovascular techniques
Find out how our medical centers are constructed and how we train supporting technical staffs.
Completed Missions
Cambodia 2005 & 2006 at the PPHC
Presbyterian - Edward Life Science medical missions read ›
Afghanistan 2006 at the FMIC
Medical mission at the Kabul Medical Institute for Children read ›
Mozambique Dec 2006 at the MHI
Medical mission at the Maputo Heart Institute, December 2006 read ›
Senegal March 2007 at the DCC
Medical mission at the Dakar Cardiology Insititute, March 2007 read ›