Julius from Tanzania was a very energetic boy and had enormous brown eyes. He had the chance to meet Dr. Aki Tamir who felt in love with the little boy personality and persist to bring the child to Israel to have his life saved. “A heart like Julius evoked an explosion in me” Dr. Tamir said.
One day, when he was six, Julius’s parents noticed he had difficulties performing normal activities. His father discovered the problem while heading home, his little boy couldn’t make it to the entrance door and his heart was beating rapidly.
Six months later, his congenital heart disease was discovered when the boy came to have a screening at one of SACH medical mission abroad, in Tanzania.
In 2012 on May 16th, Julius entered Wolfson Medical Center. Dr. Lior Sasson and his team operated his heart and preformed a complete surgical repair.
Julius is one of 4400 children that SACH has brought to Israel from all over the world to have lifesaving heart operations. Julius shared the children ward at the Wolfson hospital, recovering from surgery with children from Syria, Irak, Tanzania, Ethiopia and Romonia.
Like for all the other children, all the expenses of the surgery, the travel and accommodation were covered by SACH. The doctors are volunteering, giving their times and energy to save lives. In this way SACH can centralize the funds on covering the cost of surgery itself.
Five years later, during a mission in the Tanzania, SACH team arrived at Julius school and on a beautiful and emotional moment reuniting with the recovered little boy.
Julius was playing with his siblings, helping his mother to carry water and luckily riding his bike like a normal child.
The foundation does not only bring children for operations in Israel but in order to create more sustainable change in the medicine available in developing countries , also sponsor medical training for personnel from all over the world on pediatric cardiac care at the Wolfson Medical Center.
This way the doctors from developing countries can treat the children with heart defects in their origin countries.
The international humanitarian organization provided free live-saving critical procedures to more than 4400 children in 58 countries since its debuts in 1995.
Many children come from Africa, Eastern Europe and South America, but some come for the Middle east as well, including Syria, Iraq, the West bank and Gaza.
‘More than half of the children operated at Wolfson hospital are Palestinians’ said the Public relations officer, Tamar Shapira. The non-profit organization does not know any borders and has no limit for its actions surgeons and nurses are working for the safety, health and well-being of the children coming from all around the world.
The UN has recognized the wonderful work of SACH and gave it, in 2011, official consultative status. The Palestinian delegate was one of the delegates who spoke during the session of the UN NGO committee that granted the status to SACH, thanking the organization for their humanitarian work saving the lives of Palestinian children.