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The Heal-A-Heart Program is the
centerpiece of the Rachel Cooper
Foundation’s commitment to save the lives of
children born with congenital heart defects.
It was inspired by the need to provide life
saving open heart surgery to children from
around the world who are born in nations
that lack the skilled surgeons and the
advanced medical facilities to correct their
congenital heart defects. Without surgical
intervention, these children are destined to
suffer through childhood with severely
impaired health and the certainty of a short
life span. The cruel irony is that most of
these surgeries pose no difficulty for
skilled surgeons to perform and are
routinely available to children in the
United States.
To date, the Rachel Cooper Foundation has
sponsored over 800 of these life saving
procedures on children from such disparate
nations as the Ukraine, Kosovo, Croatia,
Egypt, Iraq, Sir Lanka, Cyprus, The
Philippines, Peru, Ecuador and most of the
nations of Central America and the
Caribbean. Our partnership with the Rotary
“Gift of Life” program has made many of
these operations possible. Our friends in
Rotary have identified, transported and
found host families for many of these
children. The children are brought to
hospitals in the tri-state area and placed in the hands of
skilled surgeons, and their dedicated
surgical teams. Generally, within a few days
of their surgeries, these children, who came
to us weakened, underdeveloped and
immobilized are up running with all the
vitality of normal healthy children.
Another aspect of the Heal-A-Heart Program
has been our support of medical missions
such as the 2008 mission of Heart Care
International to El Salvador led by Dr.
Robert Michler, Chairman of Cardiothoracic
Surgery at Montefiore Medical Center. During
an intensive week of surgery, Dr. Michler’s
all volunteer team completed 30 open heart
surgeries and 25 cardiatric cauterizations.
In addition to the 55 children whose lives
they saved, they also trained local surgeons
in the sophisticated techniques required for
pediatric cardiothoracic surgery so they
could form the nucleus of a self-sustaining
program in El Salvador.
Most recently, we provided co-sponsorship to the Rotary District 7490's "Gift of Life Foundation Medical Mission to Ecuador." This team was able to successfully complete 17 procedures on the children of Ecuador who suffer from congenital heart disease. More information on this project can be found here: GOL MEDICAL MISSION.PDF
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